Thermopylae, a California startup founded by a 21-year-old engineer from Ukraine, has raised $1.6 million in pre-financing. It is making an unusual drone interceptor that costs up to $10,000.
Thermopylae, a California startup founded by a 21-year-old engineer from Ukraine, has raised $1.6 million in pre-financing. It is making an unusual drone interceptor that costs up to $10,000.
The name Thermopylae comes from the famous battle of the Spartans against the Persians at Thermopylae, reports Tectonic, citing an exclusive press release. The startup was founded by engineer Yegor Balytsky, who left Ukraine at the age of 17 after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.
Balitsky met Thermopylae co-founder Carter Scherer in June and launched Thermopylae after several successful hackathons. The team received its first check from San Francisco-based accelerator Founders, Inc. that same month, and soon demonstrated a working prototype to several investors and the military in Nevada.
The company is creating an ultra-lightweight, foldable quadcopter that launches from a standard mortar-like tube. The entire design is designed to have enough power to shoot down hovering bombs and drones like the Shahed.
Thanks to thermal guidance, the electric-powered interceptor can reach speeds of up to 350 km/h with a payload and a target flight time of up to 20 minutes. The cost of one drone is less than $10,000, and it is designed with partial reusability in mind. If the drone misses its target and crashes, it can be recovered and easily converted into another.
After building a prototype with the first check from Founders, Inc., Thermopylae secured $1.6 million in pre-seed funding from Silicon Valley investor Naval Ravikant and Ukraine-focused defense technology venture fund UA1, with participation from Norgard Capital and angel investors from SGA Capital and Cyrus Ventures.
«Thermopylae combines two qualities that are extremely important for UA1 at this stage: deep technical knowledge and speed of execution. Yegor and I are Ukrainians, and we are both focused on solving one of the most important problems of modern warfare: stopping cheap, massive deep strike threats,» said Tectonic Director of UA1 Ivan Taranenko.
The founder of Thermopylae plans to return to Ukraine to begin testing his interceptor with Ukrainian frontline units and build up local production capacity.
«We want to make sure that from the very beginning, from the previous round of funding, we will apply it in Ukraine and show the world that regardless of whether we fail, we will still take a risk and test it with soldiers. I am Ukrainian myself, so I don’t want to waste their time, but I want to provide them with this value,» said Yehor Balytsky.
