Chaos Industries collects $510M in Series D round
Gettyimages.com / Eugene Mymrin
By
Ross Wilkers
The three-year-old counter-drone tech specialist, is led by a co-founder of Epirus, another defense tech unicorn.
Chaos Industries, a maker of counter-drone and communication technologies, has collected $510 million in Series D capital from investors to help expand its development and manufacturing capacity.
Founded in 2022, Chaos designs its Coherent Distributed Network system to help soldiers and field operators detect adversaries’ unmanned aerial vehicles on a quicker turn. Sensors are also part of Chaos’ overall offering in order to give users and teams synchronized timelines for mitigating the threat.
Valor Equity Partners led the round announced Thursday, which brings Chaos’ touted valuation to around $4.5 billion. Existing investors 8VC and Accel are also continuing their involvement in Chaos.
In its announcement, Chaos cites the heavy use of unmanned aircraft in the Russia-Ukraine war as part of the overall demand landscape. Governments around the world and the industrial base have sought to learn lessons from that campaign, while also seeking to understand the proliferation of drones on domestic soil including around airports.
Chaos’ defense portfolio includes a $1.9 million award from the Air Force to adapt its Astria air-and-missile defense radar into an instrumentation radar for tracking multiple types of objects.
The company is also working under a separate $10 million appropriation, which was cleared by the House in September, to offer its distributed network system for military training.
“This funding is both validation of our long-term vision and a testament to the world-class team behind it — builders from Silicon Valley and leaders from defense and government,” Chaos’ founder and chief executive John Tenet said in a release. “We’re incredibly proud of recent milestones like our work with Eglin Air Force Base and collaborations across the broader defense technology ecosystem. This new capital ensures we can continue to exponentially scale our capabilities to deliver domain dominance near and far.”
Ziva is also a co-founder of Epirus, which specializes in directed energy systems such as lasers to bring down UAVs.
Like Chaos, Epirus is one of a handful defense tech startups whose touted valuations exceed $1 billion. Anduril, Saronic and Shield AI are also part of the club.