Epirus has announced it has successfully secured an additional $250 million in funding for its Leonidas high-power microwave weapon program.
In a statement earlier this week, the company said that this new investment will enable it to scale up production to meet the increasing global demand for directed-energy defense systems. This latest funding round brings the total venture funding to more than $550 million.
Leonidas is a ground-based, directed-energy weapon designed to unleash an electromagnetic pulse that disrupts the electronic systems of unmanned aerial vehicles. The system can also be used to counter drone swarms as it covers a wide area with a broad beam, with Epirus Founder Joe Lonsdale describing it as “the best protection against drone swarms today.”
According to Epirus, the Leonidas program is designed to help militaries transition from a traditional “1-to-1” defense model to a more scalable “1-to-many” approach, highlighting that today’s battlefields – notably those in Ukraine and the Middle East – are “littered with thousands of low-cost, highly networked and highly distributed threats”.
As a result, there is a necessity for “technologies that are scalable and easily upgraded to fit a range of use cases, effective against a spectrum of threats, and capable of processing many threats simultaneously by a single operator.”
In addition, Epirus plans to use the funding to significantly expand its workforce, enhance supply chain resilience, and upgrade internal systems and processes related to the manufacturing of Leonidas. Furthermore, the investment will be used to support the expansion of the company’s manufacturing footprint in the U.S. and aims to help broaden its market reach.
The company also plans to open an immersive simulation center in Oklahoma – home to U.S. Army Garrison Fort Sill and the Joint Counter-Small UAS University at the Fires Center of Excellence – in Q3 2025. The center is being designed to deliver a realistic and immersive training environment to prepare warfighters for contemporary threats.
This additional funding will support the company in providing its Leonidas system to its military customers, including the U.S. Navy who awarded Epirus a $5.5 million contract in September 2024, and the U.S. Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO), who granted the company a $17 million contract in October 2024.
Crédit photographique : Epirus.
