Some companies build hardware. Some companies build hope. Tenna Systems builds clarity in a world where the air itself is contested. Today, Tenna Systems, formerly Tip and Cue Inc., closed an oversubscribed $13.5M Seed round. Let that breathe for a second. Hardware free spectrum intelligence for modern electronic warfare is not a polite dinner topic. It is the invisible chessboard where nations move without moving. Costanoa led the round, with Viola Ventures, Fresh Fund, 202 Ventures, and existing investors stepping in with conviction. When capital that sharp leans forward, it is not out of curiosity. It is pattern recognition.
Avner Bendheim, Co Founder and CEO, and Gabriel Bendheim, Co Founder, did not wake up one morning and decide to chase a trend. They spent decades leading signals intelligence and electronic warfare programs. They have seen what happens when legacy systems cannot keep up with low cost interference and fast shifting RF threats. They built Tenna Systems because the old way of fighting in the spectrum feels like bringing a typewriter to a cyber war.
Tenna Systems turns a blizzard of sensor data into a real time map of radio frequency domains. Avner Bendheim calls it AccuWeather for electronic warfare. That line sticks because it is simple. But the implications are not. Real time visibility. Precise geolocation of interference. No new hardware required. Leveraging existing emitters and receivers already in the field. Software as the force multiplier. In a contested electromagnetic environment, ground truth is everything. If you cannot see the spectrum, you are guessing. Guessing is expensive.
The company is already engaged with the United States Army, the United States Air Force, and other federal defense agencies, with operational deployments alongside electronic warfare and SIGINT units in allied defense forces. That is not theory. That is field work. The kind that either works or it does not.
The $13.5M will accelerate expansion in the United States defense market, where Tenna Systems is partnering with government agencies and prime contractors to deliver spectrum intelligence at scale. They plan to more than double headcount in the next 12 months. When a defense tech company hires that fast, it means the demand signal is loud.
There is a bigger lesson here. The future of defense will not be won by piling on more hardware. It will be won by software that sees what others miss and adapts faster than the threat. Tenna Systems is betting that the spectrum is not just air. It is terrain.
