Echodyne on Monday said it has closed a $135 million fundraising round that it will use to expand its workforce in all areas, including sales and marketing, product development and manufacturing as it prepares for an expected uptick in growth for its radar products, which are low-cost, low-power and low-weight.
The funding round was co-led by the United Kingdom-based investment firm Baillie Gifford, a new investor, and Bill Gates, an existing investor, and also includes
Northrop Grumman [NOC], New Enterprise Associates, Madrona Ventures, Vulcan Capital, and Vanedge Capital. The minority investment by Northrop Grumman, the first by the company in Echodyne, was disclosed earlier this year.
“We are seeing significant customer demand across multiple markets and applications where our patented technology simply creates the best performing radar available,” Eben Frankenberg, Echodyne’s CEO, said in a statement. “The additional capital demonstrates strong enthusiasm and confidence from world-class investors and anchors our ambition to be the world’s leading radar solutions company.”
The new funding brings total investments in Echodyne to $195 million since the company was founded in 2014.
“We hope that coincides with the same kind of hockey stick on the growth side of the business,” Frankenberg told Defense Daily in a virtual interview. “That’s the expectation that we have and our investors are hoping for as well.”
Echodyne, which is based in Washington, has about 130 employees. The company hasn’t said how many employees it expects to add with the new funding “but we do plan to add quite a few and it will be across the board,” Frankenberg said.
The company has been adding to its sales and marketing team and now will accelerate that, he said.
EchoGuard was the company’s first product, a short-range 3-D radar, and then last fall it introduced EchoShield, a 4-D mid-range radar. The compact electronically scanned array radars are used for counter-drone applications, base security, border security, portable surveillance and other uses.
Frankenberg in the interview that the EchoShield is seeing “really strong reception from the people who are seeing that and have been talking to us for quite a while and now it’s coming out and we will need to scale up our manufacturing capabilities, we hope, to meet the demands that will be there.”
The new investments will help with developing new products and expanding existing ones and will cover hardware and software, Frankenberg said. The company has been more focused in the hardware, which “is getting pretty complete at this point and robust,” he said.
New radars will be coming out but customers are wanting more software capabilities so this fall Echodyne will be “talking about…software that helps us manage large networks of radars,” he said. The company’s radars can be installed over large areas and be networked but it relies on its partners to manage the integration.
Now Echodyne is developing software to make it easier for its partners and customers to manage a larger network of radars, he said.
Northrop Grumman has integrated Echodyne’s radar onto its Bushmaster Gun Truck for counter-drone applications. Frankenberg said the radar is being used for fire control to keep a camera locked on a target to calculate a firing solution “and that continues to work exceptionally well.”
Northrop Grumman is marketing the gun truck as an economical solution to counter small unmanned aircraft systems.
Frankenberg said that with four EchoGuard radars integrated on the Bushmaster Gun Truck or a Stryker vehicle equipped with a 30-millimeter remote weapon station, a small drone could be detected a kilometer away and the gun could be directed to fire on the target. With EchoShield, the detection range against a small drone increases to three kilometers, he said.
Echodyne radars are being used in a number of defense, security and autonomous applications. Anduril Industries is using the radar for border security for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and so is defense start-up Epirus, which has developed high-power microwave technology to counter drones.
Australia’s EOS Defence Systems is also using the radars on their directed energy and kinetic-based systems to detect and defeat drones and the Advanced Technology Systems Company is using the radar on the U.S. Army’s Security Surveillance System program.