Protecting Drones from Jamming Attacks: infiniDome Raises $9 Million in Series A

infiniDome Raises $9M in Series A Round Led by Hanwha Aerospace

by DRONELIFE Staff Writer Ian M. Crosby

Anti-jamming solutions provider infiniDome has closed $9M in a Series A funding round led by South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace, alongside Honeywell Ventures and Next Gear Ventures.

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This funding will support the deployment of infiniDome’s GPSdome2 to major defense forces such as US DoD, Israeli Defense prime, South Korean Army (ROK armed forces), and Indian armed forces. This is Honeywell Ventures’ third round of investment in infiniDome, with Next Gear Ventures having supported the company since their Seed round. Going forward, infiniDome intends to maintain its partnership with its strategic investors through joint development of dedicated solutions and global commercial agreements.

“We see the great value of Hanwha’s investment and partnership with infiniDome. The synergy of Hanwha’s vast network and leadership in APAC and worldwide, combined with infiniDome’s innovative breakthrough and critical technology and IP, ensures a strong long term strategic relationship,” said Korea Israel Innovation Center Founder Jasmine Topor. “Korea Israel Innovation Center (KIIC) is honored to be able to provide its members with tailored tech scouting and access to Israel’s innovative technologies. The synergies and partnership were immediately clear to both sides and the process was short and efficient. We look forward to continuing creating value to our members.”

“This strategic investment serves as a meaningful step to support our customers in leveraging emerging technologies across a wide spectrum of platforms, including commercial and military drones,” said Kwangjin Kim, Senior Vice President, Navigation System Business Group at Hanwha Aerospace. “We look forward to building advanced capabilities that will keep our customers ahead of new threats and challenges.”

Founded in 2016 by Omer Sharar (CEO), Moshe Kaplan (CTO), and Ehud Sharar (President and VP Manufacturing), infiniDome creates GPS protection and resilient navigation solutions made to protect UAVs and vehicles from jamming attacks. Currently innovating on GPS protection for UAVs for defense/HLS, the company will be expanding to delivery drone protection. Having recently grown to 26 employees, infiniDome’s team leads the way in the fields of GNSS, RF, EW and UAV technologies. The company was recently recognized by AUVSI as finalists for the AUVSI XCELLENCE Awards in the Technology category for its GPSdome2 – granting high end protection for small to medium platforms. infiniDome’s advanced GPS system protection solutions guarantee reliable ongoing positioning and navigation data, even within heavily challenged GNSS environments. Alongside their strategic partners, infiniDome is developing solutions that combine data from multiple sensors such as anti-jamming modules, INS, radar technologies, GPS integrity and attack monitoring tools, resulting in a full navigation resiliency solution for both defense and commercial clients.

Orbiting at 20,000km above the earth’s surface, GPS signals are exceedingly weak and vulnerable to jamming. Both manned ground vehicles and unmanned vehicles such as UAV, UGV, and USV are heavily reliant on GPS for tracking friendly forces, navigation, and autonomous flight. As such, GPS jamming attacks pose a major risk to both operation and safety. With GPS jammers becoming increasingly available, integration of anti-jamming solutions is proving more necessary than ever. infiniDome’s market-leading anti-jamming solutions satisfy strict C-SWaP (Cost, Size, Weight, and Power) limitations for mobile assets such as UAS/UAV where size, weight, and power are are of major importance, resulting in a major advantage over large, heavy, and expensive anti-jamming systems.

“Honeywell congratulates infiniDome on successfully closing its recent series A funding round,” said Matt Picchetti, VP of Navigation and Sensors at Honeywell Aerospace. “Honeywell has been an early investor in infiniDome and we have developed a strong partnership through our co-development of resilient Navigation solutions. These products enable UAV operators to accomplish their missions when GNSS is unavailable and we look forward to expanding this partnership to enable GNSS resiliency across a broader set of use cases.”

“Although the defense market had been executing BVLOS and even autonomous UAV missions for quite some time, we see the demand for smaller, light, cheaper UAVs increase from year to year,” said Omer Sharar. “Together with our partners Honeywell and now with Hanwha as well, we plan to disrupt this $4B anti-jamming market, by providing solutions tailored to answer the growing demand in its largest and fastest growing segments – Class 1-3 UAVs and massive vehicles fleets.” Omer concludes by mentioning that the biggest pain point today is in defense – executing GPS-dependent missions – but the rapidly growing commercial UAV market (estimated at $30B by 2030) is waiting around the corner and will require at least the same level of protection, mainly to enable safe integration in the civilian ecosystem.

infiniDome Funding

In total, infiniDome has raised $7M to date, in addition to $1.5M from the Israel Innovation Authority. The additional funds and support from investors such as VentureIsrael, Kyto, Aston Partners, and Pointman I in this round will allow infiniDome to deploy GPSdome2, as well as design resilient navigation solutions made to satisfy future AAM (Advanced Aerial Mobility) requirements, as well as assist in advancing commercial regulations and improving the safety and security of critical operations worldwide.

Read more:

• infiniDome Demonstrates Robust Navigation System, Tailored for Drones
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• Ring, the Compact Counter Drone System Using GNSS Manipulation to Pacify Threats
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Ian attended Dominican University of California, where he received a BA in English in 2019. With a lifelong passion for writing and storytelling and a keen interest in technology, he is now contributing to DroneLife as a staff writer.