San Francisco, CA: Defence hardware startup Mara has raised a $7 million pre-seed round led by Khosla Ventures to develop Spike, an automated counter-UAS system designed to address the growing threat posed by small, inexpensive FPV drones reshaping modern conflict.
Mara Targets Growing FPV Drone Threat
San Francisco-based Mara is developing Spike for a battlefield environment where small FPV drones can cost only a few hundred dollars while disabling vehicles worth millions of dollars or disrupting power infrastructure.
Much of the counter-drone, or counter-UAS, industry was built around a different threat profile: larger drones flying at high altitudes along predictable courses.
However, small FPV drones can launch from different locations, attack in groups from multiple directions and increasingly rely on fiber-optic control links or onboard guidance to bypass traditional electronic jamming.
Despite billions of dollars in counter-drone investment, these drones remain a leading cause of combat casualties globally.
Following Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb in June 2025, the threat posed by FPV drones became increasingly evident, with the technology demonstrating an ability to reach strategic and civilian targets thousands of kilometres from active combat.
Mara was founded to address this threat. The company said its latest $7 million pre-seed funding will help bring Spike, its integrated counter-UAS platform, from field testing to broader combat deployment.
The funding round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from a16z Speedrun, Night Capital, Palmdrive, Protagonist, Freedom Fund and Indicator Fund, along with angel investors.
Why Mara Is Focusing on FPV Drones
FPV drones use pincer, swarm and ambush tactics to circumvent conventional defences.
Traditional counter-UAS systems typically rely on a gun, laser or semi-piloted interceptor focused on a single sensor and effector cone. Such systems can be effective against larger, high-flying threats or individual FPV drones.
However, their effectiveness becomes more limited when several small drones approach rapidly from different directions.
Across the Ukrainian front line’s “gray zone”, hundreds of FPVs can be present in the air per square kilometre, according to Mara.
Mara’s approach is based on distributed, autonomous and omnidirectional defence.
“Small drones changed the battlefield because they distributed the cost and capability of precise attack,” said Daniel Kofman, Co-Founder and CEO of Mara.
“Most defenses still concentrate both replacement cost and line of fire. Spike instead creates a distributed mesh of small, cheap nodes that can each aim and shoot in multiple directions at once.”
Spike uses stationary targeting sensors together with a magazine of small interceptors, providing 360-degree hemispherical coverage in a portable package. Mara has designed the system to be fully attritable, from its sensors through to its interceptors.
The company said Spike can engage dozens of threats simultaneously while maintaining a system cost below the value of the asset being protected.
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How Mara’s Spike System Works
Spike combines the counter-UAS chain into one system made up of two modular components that can operate independently or together.
The Spotter targeting system combines visual and acoustic sensors with optional radar and Mara’s in-house artificial intelligence for detection during the day, at night and in different weather conditions.
The Seeker kinetic interceptor weighs 250 grams, can travel at 200 km/h and is tube-launched with onboard intelligence.
Spike can autonomously transmit launch orders from Spotter to Seeker. However, Mara said a human remains on the loop to establish rules of engagement and safely abort launches when necessary.
The system is designed to scale according to the mission. A rucksack-portable configuration can protect a dismounted squad, while vehicle-mounted Spike systems can provide coverage for a convoy.
Larger deployments can establish multi-kilometre perimeters around military bases, front lines, sporting events or power plants.
From Dorm-Room Prototypes to Field Testing
Mara was founded in October 2024 by Daniel Kofman and Sriram Raghu. The two founders met in high school in 2013 and have continued building companies and technologies together since then.
Their work on drones began with tactical FPV prototypes developed for a DHS programme and assembled from their college dorm rooms.
The pair later co-founded Optivolt alongside its current CEO. The company shipped smart solar panels to Anduril, the U.S. Air Force and Ukraine.
Mara subsequently grew from the founders’ belief that the defence industry had left a significant and lethal gap in counter-drone capabilities.
Over the past several months, components of Spike have moved into live field exercises.
Seeker completed intercepts cued through U.S. Army software during an exercise in Texas. During another Army exercise in Europe, Spotter operated hands-free on an armoured vehicle and fed detection data into Army command software.
Mara also demonstrated an end-to-end engagement during field testing with a U.S. special operations unit. During the test, Spotter detected the target and cued Seeker to launch without operator input.
Most recently, in July, Ukrainian forces operated Spotter 40 kilometres from the front line, where it tracked multiple FPV drones.
Mara Expands Beyond Military Applications
Mara is also deploying Spike in a civilian pilot at a South Korean port.
The company has cooperative research and testing agreements with three U.S. defence organisations.
Mara was also selected for NATO’s DIANA innovation accelerator and is in early-stage engagement with international military partners in the UK, Czech Republic and Ukraine.
“Mara has moved rapidly from proof-of-concept to user testing for an autonomous system,” said Nicole Fraenkel, Partner at Khosla Ventures.
“what caught my eye is that they’re building counter-drone autonomy with a system cost that’s orders of magnitude lower than anything else we’ve seen.”
What’s Next for Mara
Mara is currently focused on deploying Spike with key customers for ground-mounted use by the end of 2026.
Vehicle-mounted and man-portable capabilities are expected to launch alongside production scale-up in 2027.
Once Spike is deployed at scale, Mara plans to continue its mission of using machine autonomy to defend human autonomy by mass-producing an arsenal of small, low-cost robots designed to operate across land, air and sea battle environments.
