Firestorm Labs raises $82M Series A to put mobile drone factories at the edge of the battlefield

Firestorm Labs raises $82M to move drone factories to the battlefield

Firestorm Labs, a 150-person defense tech company based in San Diego, has closed an $82M Series A led by Washington Harbor, with participation from Omnis Capital, Geodesic, and others. The money will fund execution on existing contracts and international expansion of its mobile manufacturing system.

The core product is the Xcel, a two-container mobile factory built around an exclusive arrangement with HP's industrial-grade 3D printing hardware — the same class of machine used in F1 manufacturing. The first container houses the printer and a powder-based build process; the second handles finishing and assembly. The entire system ships in standard 20-foot containers whose sides fold down to create a working floor. A complete drone airframe comes out printed, de-powdered, and ready for assembly without Chinese-sourced carbon fiber.

“We just raised $82,000,000 led by Washington Harbor for series a... Our whole vision is to reinvent and transform how we build drones. A lot of the drones we buy as a country cost more than a Ferrari and you use them one time. We think that's not economically feasible in the long run. And then the second thing is you gotta be able to move this manufacturing to the point of need.”

The manufacturing argument

Dan Magy founded the company in 2022 after watching ISIS use cheap off-the-shelf drones to fight U.S. forces to a near-standstill in Iraq. His original counter-UAS company, started in 2015, brought him into Naval Special Warfare operations — enough field exposure to see that expensive, single-use drones aren't a viable long-term model.

Firestorm builds its own drone designs, including the Tempest and Xcel platforms, and also partners with third-party manufacturers. One partnership is with Orca, a Croatian company whose FPV drone design was delivered to Ukrainian forces roughly 300,000 times last year. Firestorm has re-engineered that airframe to replace carbon fiber with its printed powder alternative. Assembly takes 13 minutes. If a part breaks, a replacement can be printed on-site rather than waiting the three to four weeks some suppliers currently take to deliver field repairs.

Beyond drones

Once bases started receiving the Xcel, the use cases expanded quickly. Magy shows examples of non-drone military parts now being produced on the system — an engine coolant tank for a Marine Corps LTV that currently carries a 10-month lead time from its OEM, and a $2 printed replacement for a GPS antenna housing that would otherwise require purchasing a $2,500 antenna because the original manufacturer doesn't supply the repair part separately.

The broader argument is that OEM consolidation and supplier disinterest in low-volume components have left the military with real readiness gaps. Firestorm's pitch is that a mobile factory at the point of need closes those gaps without waiting on a defense industrial base that isn't set up to serve them.

Commercial traction

The company recently won an AppFit contract worth $30M. The next phase, supported by the Series A, is deploying the Xcel to allied nations overseas — positioning the system as a supply chain solution for U.S. partners, not just domestic bases.