Neros closes $10.9M; opens new factory
Neros is proud to officially announce the closing of our seed funding round, bringing our pre-seed (Cantos) and seed (Sequoia Capital, Cantos, Peter Thiel, A*, D3, Long Journey, BoxGroup) raises to a total of $10.9M.
Neros is on a mission to build effective, practical, unmanned systems that keep military deterrence viable and directly save American and allied lives on the battlefield. Seeing severe gaps in American and allied supply and manufacture, we aim to be part of the restoration of industrial superiority.
In addition to our funding news, we also recently marked the opening of our 15,500 s.f. facility in El Segundo, equipped to support both cutting-edge R&D and high-volume production. The factory will not only support final assembly, but also production of critical components, our first move toward full vertical stack. From the whiteboard-sided conference room where we hold planning sessions, huddles, and daily standups, to the fresh factory floor, we’ve hit the ground running — as we scale production of our first product for upcoming deliveries and engineer next generations, integrating critical feedback from units deployed in the field.
Neros is committed to being a manufacturing-first company that measures success by the number of systems deployed in critical areas across the globe. Our experience in Ukraine has shown us the immense scale of uncrewed systems in a modern conflict, with their armed forces using over 50,000 drones per month (estimated by Ukrainian officials). Mired by a depleted industrial base, American companies have struggled to produce at meaningful scale or offer systems at reasonable cost compared to foreign alternatives. China, with the strongest electronics production in the world, has been supplying the vast majority of drones and components to both Ukraine and Russia, simultaneously profiting from both sides and favoring Russia heavily. Neros exists because this is an unacceptable reality.
In founding Neros, we began with immense drone experience (in fact, both of us started building tech by age ten, and originally met as some of the few teens at early drone races). Previously a professional drone racing pilot with the Drone Racing League, and having won the MultiGP world championship in 2020, Soren started his first business in high school, which still serves products to the drone racing community. Olaf started flying remote control planes when he was 10, which ignited his drive to understand the underlying technology. He began designing and building custom FPV drones at 13. By 16 he was designing and selling electrical drone circuits (PCBs) from scratch. By 18 his designs had sold over 4000 units and were being used by the world’s top pilots. In 2023, Olaf put college on hold to co-found Neros Technologies.
Our team is currently less than a dozen people, and we continue to add world-class people across every front of the business. We believe that small, elite organizations drive the best results and have exemplified this in early hires such as our Head of Hardware, Sean Wood, who spent the previous 12 years at SpaceX across Falcon 9 and Starlink satellite manufacturing. Earl G. Matthews, who was previously a Senior Director of the National Security Council and acting General Counsel to the U.S. Army, joined Neros as employee number 2 to head up business development and legal. In fact, a description of any of our team members would illustrate this depth; there’s just not room in this post.
We are looking for the most driven and talented people to join our mission– if this sounds exciting, we’d love to hear from you.
Source: https://medium.com/@sorenma/neros-closes-10-9m-opens-new-factory-13f75df7f059
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