Benchmark leads $25M seed round into missile-maker Furientis

Benchmark, the storied Silicon Valley venture firm, is making its first bet on a pure defense startup. The firm is leading a $25 million seed round into Furientis, a one-year-old company whose name means “of fury” in Latin and whose mission is to mass-produce missile interceptors. Furientis has already secured a funded Pentagon contract to build mid-range interceptors, and the round values the company at $125 million, according to a person familiar with the company.

The seed round follows a $5 million pre-seed round announced in May. Benchmark general partner Chetan Puttagunta said the progress the founders made on that smaller sum was remarkable: they built prototypes and completed roughly a dozen launches before Benchmark’s investment.

Furientis’ speed is driven by its co-founders, who bring years of aerospace and defense engineering experience. Brody Franzen served as deputy chief engineer at Virgin Galactic before joining Castelion, a hypersonic missile startup valued at $13 billion, while Aris Simsarian previously led rocket engine testing at Virgin Orbit. The duo launched Furientis after concluding that the U.S. military faces a severe shortage of “exquisite” missiles — ones that can cost around $3 million each — to counter cheaper adversary threats.

According to Franzen, the U.S. Navy receives just 300 to 500 interceptor missiles annually, compared with a rate China claims is 3,000 anti-ship cruise missiles a month. “We’re being outproduced by a factor of 100 plus,” he said. “That is why we started the company.”

Rather than matching the performance of best-in-class interceptors, Furientis designs and manufactures its systems so they can be assembled quickly from readily available components, cutting the cost of each unit to a fraction of legacy interceptors. The company tests its missiles in the field on a biweekly basis — a faster cadence than traditional defense primes such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin — and aims to eventually manufacture 1,000 systems a year at each factory. For now, Furientis operates out of a facility in Los Angeles and ships prototypes to White Sands, New Mexico, for trial launches.

Furientis is not alone in the effort to restock U.S. missile inventories: larger defense startups including Anduril, Castelion, and Shield AI are racing to build mass-produced interceptors too, even as traditional primes work to modernize their own manufacturing. Puttagunta said he isn’t deterred by the increasingly crowded field, calling it an opportunity for more companies in the sector.

Why it matters

The deal reflects how venture capital’s once-cautious stance on defense startups has shifted as the Pentagon looks for cheaper, faster-to-build alternatives to legacy missile programs. If Furientis can scale production as planned, it could help close the supply gap the U.S. military says it faces against adversaries producing at far higher volumes.