Hanwha Aerospace, one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates, along with Honeywell Ventures and Next Gear Ventures, has led a Series A funding round for infiniDome, a leading provider of anti-jamming solutions. The funding, totaling $9 million, will help infiniDome deploy its highly sought-after GPSdome2 technology to major defense forces, such as the US DoD, Israeli Defense Prime, South Korean Army (ROK armed forces), and Indian armed forces. Honeywell Ventures has invested in infiniDome for the third time with this round, while Next Gear Ventures has been a continuous supporter since the Seed round. Moving forward, infiniDome intends to work in tandem with its strategic investors to jointly develop 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,” says Jasmine Topor, Founder of the Korea Israel Innovation Center. “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 on June 22, 2016, infiniDome specializes in developing GPS protection and resilient navigation solutions aimed at safeguarding UAVs and vehicles from jamming attacks. Currently, the company is disrupting GPS protection for UAVs in the defense/HLS sector and plans to extend its reach to delivery drone protection in the future. With a team of 26 employees pushing the boundaries in GNSS, RF, EW, and UAV technologies, infiniDome’s founders include Omer Sharar (CEO), Moshe Kaplan (CTO), and Ehud Sharar (President and VP Manufacturing). Recently, AUVSI recognized the company as finalists for the AUVSI XCELLENCE Awards in the Technology category for their new GPSdome2 – a technology that provides high-end protection for small to medium platforms. InfiniDome’s innovative solutions for protecting GPS systems in critical manned and unmanned applications guarantee accurate and continuous positioning and navigation data, even in GNSS environments that pose significant challenges. With their strategic partners, the company is developing solutions that combine data from multiple sensors, such as anti-jamming modules, INS, radar technologies, GPS integrity, attack monitoring tools, and others, to offer customers a full navigation resiliency solution in both the defense and commercial sectors.

The orbit of GPS signals is approximately 20,000km above the earth’s surface, rendering them highly susceptible to jamming. This poses a significant risk to various industries that heavily rely on GPS, as they would be unable to function without it. GPS plays a vital role in tracking friendly forces, identifying friend or foe, as well as navigation and autonomous flight, for manned and unmanned ground and air vehicles such as UAVs, UGVs, and USVs. The prevalence of GPS jammers available online for as little as $30 makes GPS jamming an increasingly common occurrence worldwide. The integration of anti-jamming solutions can safeguard GPS-reliant platforms and enable them to operate in GPS-challenged or even denied environments. infiniDome is a leading provider of anti-jamming solutions that meet the stringent C-SWaP (Cost, Size, Weight, and Power) limitations for mobile assets like UAS/UAV, where size, weight, and power are critical. This advantage over traditional anti-jamming systems is significant, as they are typically large, heavy, and expensive.

“Honeywell congratulates infiniDome on successfully closing its recent series A funding round,” said Matt Picchetti, vice president, Navigation and Sensors, 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,” says 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.

In addition to the current round, infiniDome has secured a total of $7M in funding to date, including $1.5M from the Israel Innovation Authority. Alongside Hanwha Aerospace and Honeywell Ventures, this round includes support from VentureIsrael, Kyto, Aston Partners, and Pointman I. These funds and investor backing will enable infiniDome not only to deploy GPSdome2, but also to design navigation solutions that are robust and tailored to meet the needs of future Advanced Aerial Mobility (AAM) requirements. InfiniDome’s contributions will be instrumental in advancing commercial regulations and improving the safety and security of critical operations globally.

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