There are defense startups, and then there’s XTEND. Born out of Tel Aviv in late 2018 with nothing but a vision and the scars of experience, they didn’t show up to disrupt the space. They showed up to own it.
Let’s be clear: you don’t land contracts with USSOCOM, build U.S.-compliant drones that operate in GPS-denied war zones, and sell 5,000+ units in 12 months because you’ve got good marketing. You do that because your tech holds up when everything else breaks down. Because your product doesn’t blink under pressure, and neither does your team.
This week, XTEND secured a fresh $30 million in a Series B extension, co-led by Aliya Capital Partners and Protego Ventures, with strong backing from Claltech (yes, that’s Len Blavatnik’s shop), Union-Tech Ventures, and Chartered Group. That brings their total raise to $90 million, not counting a multi-year $20 million contract from Israel’s Ministry of Defense. You want validation? That’s it, in numbers, in deployments, and in where their drones are flying right now.
But it’s the squad behind XTEND that makes this story hit harder than most. Aviv Shapira, Co-Founder and CEO, didn’t stumble into this, he co-founded Replay Technologies, which Intel scooped up in 2016. His brother Matteo Shapira, now CXO, helped build that too. Rubi Liani, the CTO, isn’t just a drone guy, he founded the Israeli Drone Racing League. And Adir Tubi, COO, brings the kind of UAV and defense expertise that doesn’t need a LinkedIn badge to be legit.
What they’ve built is more than hardware. It’s XOS, their proprietary AI-powered operating system that lets humans guide autonomous missions with dead-simple commands like “enter window.” These aren’t toys, they’re battlefield-ready tools being used right now in Ukraine, Israel, and multiple allied theaters.
With a 10,000 sq. ft. facility in Tampa and plans to ramp from 20 to 100 U.S. employees over the next three years, they’re not scaling, they’re staging an offensive. The Scorpio 1000? It’s an outdoor precision striker. The XTENDER? A microdrone that thrives in tight spaces and tighter situations. Modular payloads, zero-learning curve interfaces, edge AI, and real-time analytics. That’s not a feature set, it’s a competitive perimeter.
This isn’t autonomy for the sake of innovation. It’s autonomy for the people actually out there on the line. The medics, the special forces, the responders who don’t get to hit pause when the tech fails. XTEND builds so they don’t have to.
