Swarm Aero has closed a $35 million Series A financing round led by Two Sigma Ventures and Silent Ventures. The round also drew participation from a group of seed-stage backers including Khosla Ventures, Scribble Ventures, Friends & Family Capital, Construct Capital, Coatue, Founders Fund, Alumni Ventures, and MaC Venture Capital. The new capital brings the company's total raised to $59 million since its founding in 2022.
The announcement comes shortly after Swarm opened an 80,000 square foot Advanced Manufacturing Center at Drake Field in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Headquartered in Oxnard, California, the company also maintains offices in Spokane, Washington and Washington D.C.
The economics of combat aviation have been moving in the wrong direction for decades. Each new generation of manned fighter aircraft costs roughly three times the previous one, driven in large part by the need to protect pilots and account for fast-evolving threats. Drone warfare opens the door to reversing that trend. Manufacturing uncrewed vehicles at the rate last seen during World War II is now a real operational goal, not just an idea.
But not all drones are equivalent. Smaller systems with limited range often need support just to reach the area of operation. Swarm Aero's large multimission UAV is designed for a different role: taking off in relative safety, crossing long distances, and arriving at the fight with both sense and strike capabilities intact. These aircraft carry capacity that small drones simply cannot match, making them well suited to defeat high-value targets and deliver an asymmetric impact.
"Swarm's large UAVs can achieve major combat objectives by cooperating with superhuman dexterity while being several times cheaper than traditional aircraft. This is one of the most consequential developments in modern conflict and we have built an exceptionally talented engineering team to bring this vision to life," said Danny Goodman, CEO and Co-Founder of Swarm Aero. "This new round of funding will allow us to significantly grow our team and bring the largest swarming aircraft ever built to market."
The Series A funding will go toward two parallel priorities: growing the team and bringing the company's largest swarming aircraft to market. Swarm plans to double its aircraft team in 2026 and is actively hiring across the organization.
On the manufacturing side, Swarm has developed an approach to producing carbon composites at a high rate, which allows for airframe throughput that would not be practical using conventional methods. The new Advanced Manufacturing Center in Arkansas is central to that production strategy.
The second major area of investment is Legion, Swarm's command and control software. Controlling a swarm of thousands of uncrewed vehicles is a fundamentally different problem from piloting a single drone. The current standard for remotely piloted aircraft assigns up to four human operators per vehicle. That model does not scale. Legion addresses this by allowing a single operator to define mission objectives, then translating those into commands across large numbers of robotic systems in the air, on land, or at sea. The platform has already demonstrated single-operator control of dozens of live assets in complex operations.
Swarm was also selected by the Defense Innovation Unit from a pool of 132 companies to write software for the Autonomous Collaborative Teaming program, which is focused on scaling drone operations to thousands of vehicles at a time.
Two Sigma Ventures Partner Colin Beirne said the firm was convinced from the start that no other team had "the technical depth, government experience, and mission focus required to take this on." He pointed specifically to Swarm's ability to combine low-cost volume production with software that enables many-to-one operator control as the deciding factor.
Silent Ventures, which co-led the pre-seed before returning for this round, sees the large UAV category as largely uncontested. Managing Partner Jackson Moses noted that most players in the market remain focused on smaller Group 1 drones, while Swarm is building higher-performance systems at scale "without the absurd cost structure and lead times that plague legacy programs."
Founded in 2022 by Danny Goodman, Swarm Aero brings together engineers and operators with an unusually wide range of experience. The founding team has collectively designed and built more than 30 novel aircraft, deployed software used by a combined 4.6 billion active users worldwide, served in special operations and TOPGUN, and closed billions of dollars in defense contracts. Team members have also led materials and processes for the highest-production-rate general aircraft of the century, broken four of seven Absolute Aviation records recognized by the FAI, and contributed to the Collier Trophy and X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne program.
The broader team draws on experience from organizations including Scaled Composites, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Airbus, and Archer. That technical base, combined with deep familiarity with Department of Defense procurement, gives Swarm a foundation that is hard to replicate quickly.
Beyond the Series A investors, earlier seed and pre-seed participants include Champion Hill Ventures, Firebolt Ventures, Humba Ventures, Quiet Capital, Xander Oltmann, Sargeant Solutions LLC led by Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Sargeant (USAF, Ret.), and Saturn Ventures.
