Furientis Awarded First Funded Government Contract with Department of War

Company Raises $25M Seed from Benchmark to Accelerate Development and Expand Operations

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Furientis, the defense tech company building interceptor missiles designed for manufacturability at scale, announced today its first funded government contract, a prototyping Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) with the Department of War. The OTA award funds development of Furientis’ 100-mile-range interceptor vehicle, a system intended for homeland defense. Over the contract time period, Furientis will demonstrate the flight vehicle’s performance against Department requirements. The company also announced a $25M Seed led by Benchmark, with Chetan Puttagunta joining the board.

The United States cannot produce defensive munitions at the scale, speed, or cost required to meet the evolving threat environment. The U.S. defense industrial base excels at developing high-performance systems, but its traditional model is optimized for exquisite capability rather than affordable mass production. Rigorous systems engineering, extended design cycles, specialized materials, and complex manufacturing processes deliver exceptional performance, but also drive long timelines, constrained production capacity, and high unit costs. Modern warfare requires interceptors fielded at a volume and price point unsustainable with the existing model. Closing this gap is Furientis’s mission.

“Furientis exists to resupply our critical deficiency in defensive munitions,” said Brody Franzen, cofounder and CEO of Furientis. “Recent events have shown these threats are not theoretical, and the U.S. is genuinely running low on the systems that protect the American people. That is fundamentally a production and manufacturing problem, and it’s the one we built this company to solve.”

Furientis inverts the standard defense development model. Rather than spending years in conceptual design before flying the first prototypes, the company actively tests its prototypes in the field on a biweekly cadence. Instead of optimizing for performance, every design decision is weighed against two questions: can this part be manufactured in quantities of 1000 per year per factory, and does this enable final assembly of the vehicle in less than an hour? Where legacy programs specify aerospace-grade and military specification parts by default, Furientis uses commercial off-the-shelf components wherever they meet the requirement, and builds its solid rocket motors and seekers in-house, making high production rate, low unit cost, and supply chain resiliency achievable at the same time.

“Furientis is building truly remarkable technology with the aim of creating a platform that can scale rapidly with the lowest cost in the world. The team is comprised of some of the most talented propulsion, hardware, and software engineers in the world,” said Chetan Puttagunta, General Partner, Benchmark.

The demand for affordable, high-rate defensive munitions is accelerating. Furientis defensive interceptors are designed to be produced in quantities of one thousand per factory per year rather than a few hundred. With today’s funding and its first funded government contract, Furientis will continue investing in its vertically integrated manufacturing, expanding flight test operations, and scaling the team across engineering and manufacturing roles in their Los Angeles office. To learn more, visit furientis.com.

About Furientis

Furientis is a defense technology company building low-cost, mass-producible missile interceptors. Founded by Brody Franzen and Aris Simsarian, Furientis exists to resupply our critical deficiency in defensive munitions. Furientis is based in Los Angeles, California, building the critical mass of next-generation defense interceptors and rapidly flight-testing demonstrators.