Craft Ventures Led the Round with Forum Ventures and Rally Ventures Participating
Allen Control Systems (ACS), a defense technology company, today announced it has raised $12 million in seed capital led by Craft Ventures with participation from Forum Ventures and Rally Ventures. ACS is developing counter-drone robotic gun systems.
Low cost, lethal, and increasingly autonomous drones are being deployed in large numbers by enemy forces around the world. Radio jamming can stop many off-the-shelf commercial drones, but autonomous military drones are designed to continue their missions even when their radios are jammed. The only way to disable military drones is to physically damage them but up until now, that required expensive missiles. ACS is developing novel technology capable of neutralizing large numbers of lethal drones at a much lower cost than any solution available today.
ACS was founded by CEO Steven Simoni, CTO Luke Allen, and COO Mike Wior. Simoni and Allen are former U.S. Navy nuclear engineers who met in the service. Both were instrumentation and control systems engineers for Navy nuclear reactors. Their backgrounds span robotics, computer vision, machine learning, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and computer science. After serving in the Navy, Simoni and Allen founded Bbot, a software and robotics restaurant technology startup, where they met Mike Wior, CEO and co-founder of Omnivore, a restaurant POS transaction system. Simoni and Allen’s company was acquired by DoorDash in 2022, and Wior’s company was acquired by Olo in the same year.
“We are at a military disadvantage with our biggest rival. ACS was created to neutralize the threat of Chinese drone manufacturing dominance,” said Simoni. “DJI, the Shenzhen-based manufacturer, commands over 70% of the world’s drone market and makes a new drone every few seconds. With respect to drones, any serious dual-use mandate from our Government is about 20 years too late.”
“ACS’s products are designed with an assumption that military drones will be numerous and will be hardened against radio jamming and other long-range non-kinetic attempts at stopping them,” said Allen. “But drones can’t carry sufficient armor to stop a bullet. The downside of bullets is that aiming a gun with sufficient precision to hit a small drone is almost impossible. We understand how hard that problem is, and we believe we’re well-positioned to solve it.”
About Allen Control Systems
Allen Control Systems is a defense technology company building counter-drone robotic gun systems for a new era of drone warfare and to completely change battlefield economics. ACS is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices in Alexandria, Virginia. For more information, please visit https://www.allencontrolsystems.com/ and follow us on LinkedIn and X.
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