- Ground A completed a pre-seed round worth €9.1 million and increased its team from five members in March to 25 by September.
- One of the co-founders of Quantum Systems has personally invested in a startup developing a laser that might someday compete with his own company’s products.
- The GA 1000 is small, fits on a Euro pallet, can be transported by four people, and uses a high-energy laser to destroy drones.
The German startup Ground A, which specialises in laser-based defence technology, has raised €9.1 million euros in pre-seed financing to bring its GA 1000 counter-drone system to market.
Vsquared Ventures led the funding round, with Quantum Systems joining as a corporate investor, and other backers included GRIF, Robin Capital, ABACON, Leblon Capital and OVNI Capital.
Florian Seibel, a co-founder of Quantum Systems, also made a personal investment, along with co-CEO Sven Kruck and Andreas Nauerz from J14 Capital, and Marlon Braumann and Stefan Roebel from ARX Robotics.
When speaking about Seibel’s investment, co-founder and CEO Tobias Brune tells Tech Funding News, “I hope that my smile convinced him.” He added that the struggle between drones and countermeasures will always be akin to a cat-and-mouse game since drones are becoming cheaper and more autonomous, implying Seibel understands both sides.
From corporate engineer to drone hunter
Before Brune founded Ground A with Daniel Hariri and Roland Ralph Spiegelhalder, he had worked at two large companies, developing and scaling machine systems mainly for customers in the aerospace and defence sectors.
“That isn’t the usual kind of background for a founder,” Brune admits.
Brune decided to change his approach after observing videos showing small, low-cost Category 1 FPV drones causing serious damage even without effective countermeasures. The fact that he had obtained a PhD in engineering from RWTH Aachen also led him to found Ground A in January.
The GA 1000 progressed from the prototype stage to testing and validation in just seven months. The team grew from three to five members by March and reached 25 people by September.
According to Brune, the system consists of three main components: it can detect small, fast-moving drones; it employs autonomous targeting, which he calls the brain of the system; and it has a high-energy laser with which it can quickly destroy threats.
The unit fits on a standard Euro pallet and can be carried by four people. It has been designed to integrate with existing NATO command-and-control systems and with platforms such as tanks and unmanned ground vehicles.
When asked about his competitors, Brune is open: “I am very happy that there are several companies involved since at the moment there is no viable, scalable solution,” he says.
He splits the market into two categories: the heavy systems which produce laser power in the range of 50 to over 100 kilowatts, for example Rheinmetall and MBDA’s HoWiSM, which are not due to be fully operational until 2029 and are described as “a right to play in the market, but a totally different system,” and then there are the lighter systems that are software-integrated, such as those of Ground A.
DroneShield, a company whose shares are listed on the ASX and which had a market value of approximately $1.1 billion by September 2026, takes a different approach by detecting and jamming drones using radio frequency rather than employing lasers to destroy them.
“The ability to counter drones effectively and cost-efficiently is becoming a key technology for Europe’s security. Ground A combines precisely this operational flexibility with technological excellence, a high execution speed and the ambition to scale industrially from day one,” said Benedikt von Schoeler, general partner at Vsquared.
Money, and the co-founder who backed his own rival
Brune stated that the funds would be used to develop prototypes, bring Ground A’s first machines to market, and rapidly expand the team to stay ahead of new threats, with a further funding round planned for 2027 to increase manufacturing.
Ground A has not sold any of its systems to date. The European counter-drone market was worth $9.17 billion in 2026 and is expected to amount to $29.70 billion by 2031. It is becoming more competitive as well-funded lasers, jammers and interceptors are increasingly promoted as cost-effective solutions.
“Unfortunately, the demand will continue to grow,” Brune concludes, referring to the threats facing critical infrastructure outside of areas currently in conflict. The difficulty facing Ground A is merely about building a functional laser.
