Epirus, a startup developing smart power applications, has landed $70 million in a Series B round, the company announced Thursday.
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The new round, led by Bedrock Capital, brings Epirus’ total funding to more than $87 million. The company last raised a $17 million Series A led by 8VC1 in 2019.
Founded in 2018, the Hawthorn, California-based company designs and builds high-powered microwave products. As CEO Leigh Madden puts it, Epirus combines the knowledge of aerospace with the speed and agility of Silicon Valley.
“SmartPower enables us to take relatively low power input and generate massive power output. And we’re doing it from a solid-state platform that’s software defined,” Madden said in an interview with Crunchbase News. “And (we) really have developed a first-of-its-kind technology that generates that massive power output, which is key to our flagship product.”
The company’s flagship product, Leonidas, is a counter electronics system developed for the Department of Defense and is expected to come to the market early next year. The company’s initial customer base will be militaries of the United States and its allies, but it also has nonmilitary use cases, such as to protect critical infrastructure.
“We expect to more than double the revenue of the company over the next year, and we expect to really be a leader in technology for the Department of Defense,” Madden said. “The applications of our technology go well beyond what we’re doing for defense and counter-UAS.”
Part of the funding will be used to “significantly expand” Epirus’ talent base, Madden said. The company has more than doubled in size since the beginning of the summer, and will finish the year with about 70 employees. Epirus plans on hiring an additional 100 employees next year and doubling headcount in 2022, according to a statement from the company.
Additional investors in the Series B round include L3Harris Technologies, 8VC, Piedmont Capital Investments, Fathom VC, and Greenspring Associates.
“We’re very excited to invest in a company that has quickly translated its transformative ideas into scalable technology with broad market potential across the defense sectors,” Geoff Lewis of Bedrock said in a statement. “With its entrepreneurial mindset and scientific sophistication, we are confident that Epirus has the capacity to integrate its technology into top tier counter-UAS systems and lead the way in developing new and compelling directed energy applications.”
Illustration: Li-Anne Dias
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Fathom VC invested in the Series B round, not Fathom Capital.
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