In case you haven’t noticed, electronic warfare is kind of a big deal right now. From the frontlines of Ukraine to Caracas (apparently), everyone is trying to figure out the best way to jam and spoof their adversaries while avoiding being jammed and spoofed themselves.
Enter: Tenna Systems, an Israeli startup building a spectrum intelligence tool that basically enables you to see where EW is coming from so you can avoid it. And this morning, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, the company announced that it’s raised a $13.5M seed round to fuel its expansion in the US market and further build out its software.
“We all kind of saw this critical gap of how our systems are becoming more and more dependent on spectrum, and how contested the environment is,” Tenna CEO and Co-Founder Avner Bendheim told Tectonic. “We knew we needed a new generation of solutions to solve this threat and have spectral situational awareness to track and geolocate the targets and mitigate the threat.”
The round was led by Costanoa, with participation from Viola Ventures, Fresh Fund, 202 Ventures, and other existing investors.
Old guard: Tenna was founded in Israel in 2023 by a team that, well, knows a thing or two about signal intelligence (SIGINT).
- Avner founded the company with his twin brother Gabriel. Both worked in signal intelligence in the IDF—Avner worked in an “elite unit” for 15 years and let signal intelligence develop for the Israeli Air Force.
- Gabriel was in the IDF’s Duvdevan unit (Israeli special operations), where he was in charge of cellular direction finding and geolocation.
- The company’s CTO ran electronic intelligence for Israel Aerospace Industries.
Changing landscape: Avner said that they founded the company when they saw two main shifts on the battlefield (they have all spent time, if that wasn’t clear, on various Israeli front lines).
First, all three saw how critical the spectrum has become to modern warfare. Back in the day, Avner said, you had “dumb” bombs—they didn’t need connectivity to hit a target. But now, everything (like, the majority of cruise missiles, for example) is plugged in.
“As systems became more remotely operated—this autonomous revolution, smart ISR systems, munitions and everything—their lifeline has become connectivity,” he said. “That’s a big shift.”
Second, they saw how crowded the RF environment had become.
“Today, we’re talking about hundreds of different jammers across areas of interest,” Avner said. “All these advanced systems started missing their mark…and losing operational effectiveness. We’ve seen this throughout the most recent wars in Ukraine, Russia, around the Middle East, Yemen, [and] Iran. The current solutions that are out there are not adequate.”
The floor is lava: The team basically wanted to figure out a way for operators to see what was out there jamming them so they could avoid it. They came up with three main products to fit this particularly EW-heavy moment.
- Arena: An EW situational awareness tool that Avner described as “Accuweather for electronic warfare.” Basically, it digests a “blizzard of RF data” (including cellular location data, vessel and vehicle location data, and jammer emissions) and spits out an operating picture.
- Tracer: A geolocation tool that helps operators understand where, exactly, RF signals are coming from. Avner said it can “pinpoint the exact location of the emitters all the way down to 25 meters.”
- Halo: This is the secret sauce. Avner described it as an “embedded software armor”—basically, it can be installed onto things like UAVs and takes all of this RF awareness and helps assets navigate contested environments so they don’t, like, fall out of the sky.
And this isn’t just a concept—Avner said that their tools have been used on the battlefield by the IDF. They’re also working on contracts with agencies including the US Army, US Air Force, Missile Defense Agency, and Department of Transportation.
Avner said that this new load of cash will be used to deliver on these contracts and double the size of their team from about 20 to 40. They’ll also invest in R&D and developing “the next generation of capabilities across the complete value chain,” he added.