Epirus invests $3.7 million in DroneShield

DroneShield Ltd Has sold a 4.1% shareholding to US software and directed energy company Epirus Inc in a deal worth some $3.7 million.

Epirus is a high-growth US technology company developing software-defined directed energy systems that enable unprecedented counter-electronics effects and power management solutions to optimize power efficiency in defence and commercial applications. This includes the Leonidas solid-state, software-defined high-power microwave (HPM) technology to enable counter-electronics effects for a range of use cases. Californian company Epirus has raised approximately US$300 million (approximately A$450 million) since inception.

DroneShield will use the money raised from the transaction to fund the scaling up of ready inventory and long lead items, to rapidly fulfil anticipated orders and in the continuation of the scaling up of engineering and operations to support current momentum.

DroneShield CEO, Oleg Vornik, commented: “There are significant complementary areas between our companies, including combining DroneShield’s drone detection and soft defeat systems, with Epirus’ hard defeat solutions.” Epirus CFO, Ken Bedingfield, added: “We are excited to undertake this investment, as we have been watching the rise of militarized drone usage in battlefield for some time. Strengthening our partner ecosystem accelerates opportunities to field innovative solutions to areas with the most pressing needs.”

Over the past two months DroneShield has been recommended by the Pentagon’s Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO) for deployment across US Department of Defense (DoD) bases within the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) consortium, and various deployments with the US Army, European Government customers, a first US airport deployment, appointment to the Australian Department of Defence Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare Standing Offer Panel, and most recently a $1 million undisclosed Government order for its DroneSentry-X units.