Easy Aerial Raises $20M to Scale Tethered Defense Drones

Easy Aerial completed a $20M Series B on August 31, 2026, with Insight Partners, Entrée Capital, and unnamed private U.S. investors participating. The Brooklyn defense-technology company will use the financing to expand production, global operations, international defense programs, and its autonomous aerial systems.

The round matters because Easy Aerial is scaling a particular trade inside the drone market. Its tethered systems give up unrestricted movement in exchange for persistent power, a secure data path, and continuous elevated sensing. The $20M now has to turn that technical advantage into repeatable manufacturing and dependable program delivery across the United States and Europe.

What Happened

The Series B announcement identifies Insight Partners, Entrée Capital, and private U.S. investors as participants but does not name a lead investor. Easy Aerial also did not disclose its valuation, ownership terms, the individual private investors, or a revenue figure. The company said the capital will support greater production capacity, international defense programs, global expansion, and continued investment in autonomous aerial technologies.

Shahar Abuhazira is the current CEO quoted in the announcement. Ivan Stamatovski is a verified founder and CPO. Earlier company materials identify Ido Gur as a co-founder and former CEO, while credible reporting also identifies Ninoslav Adzibaba as a co-founder. Public sources do not establish a current operating title for every member of the founding team, so those titles should not be inferred.

Easy Aerial previously announced $4.75M across seed rounds from 2017 through 2019 and a $6.15M Series A in August 2020. Including the new Series B, the company has disclosed $30.9M in equity financing. That total excludes separate government research and procurement awards, which are different forms of capital and should not be counted as venture funding.

Why a Tether Changes the Product

Most drone stories begin with movement: range, speed, payload, autonomy, or the ability to reach a place that people cannot. Easy Aerial's tethered systems begin with a different customer requirement. A defense installation, perimeter, convoy, vessel, emergency site, or critical-infrastructure operator may need an aircraft to remain available above the same operating area for an extended period.

Easy Aerial's tether carries power and data between the aircraft and the ground system. That connection can provide persistent flight and secure data transmission while reducing the battery cycle that governs an untethered mission. The company also builds free-flight configurations, but its tethered products make the commercial reframe especially clear: the customer is buying dependable elevated presence, not a flight demonstration.

The company's Easy Mobile systems are designed for mounting on vehicles and vessels. Its Easy Site systems support stationary tethered or autonomous free-flight operations. The company describes applications across intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, force protection, perimeter security, emergency response, communications relay, and infrastructure inspection. Easy Aerial also says its products are NDAA compliant and that the company holds ISO 9001 and AS9100 certifications.

From Product Qualification to Program Delivery

Easy Aerial has spent years working inside U.S. defense qualification and procurement channels. The Defense Innovation Unit documented Easy Aerial's Osprey platform in its Blue UAS 2.0 effort, while a later Blue UAS refresh selected the company's Sparrow for verification review. The company's federal SBIR portfolio also records multiple U.S. Air Force-backed projects involving autonomous monitoring, security, and tethered systems.

Those records show technical and procurement engagement, but the Series B is aimed at the next operating layer. Easy Aerial says it has delivered hundreds of systems and recently won multiple defense and security contracts in the United States and international markets. The company did not disclose the value, customer identity, or delivery schedule for those contracts in the funding announcement.

One specific company-reported signal is a 118-system European program with Height Technologies for an unnamed NATO-aligned defense customer. Easy Aerial says assembly is underway in the Netherlands, with Height serving as prime contractor and integration lead. The program is useful evidence of international manufacturing and deployment activity, but it is not a substitute for audited revenue, contract-value, or margin disclosure.

The Investment Logic

Insight Partners Managing Director Mike Hayes joined Easy Aerial's board and framed the investment around persistent, reliable aerial intelligence without unnecessary operational complexity. His comment points to the main commercial test. Defense customers can admire autonomy, but they procure systems that can be manufactured, integrated, supported, and trusted in the field.

Entrée Capital brings an investment platform spanning early-stage technology, deep tech, and defense technology. The announcement does not explain how the round was allocated among investors or whether any participant led it, so the syndicate should be described as a group of participants rather than a lead-and-follow structure.

For Easy Aerial, the Series B finances the transition from proving a system to supplying a capability. Production quality, component availability, secure integration, training, maintenance, and local support all become part of the product once deployments move across jurisdictions. An aircraft can stay aloft because of a tether; the business still has to build the operation that keeps the entire system available.

What This Signals for Defense Autonomy

The drone market often rewards spectacle because motion is easy to film. Persistent defense infrastructure is less cinematic. It wins by remaining powered, connected, compliant, and ready while the mission continues below it. Tethered systems occupy that practical corner of autonomy, where endurance and operational simplicity can matter more than freedom of movement.

The new capital gives Easy Aerial more room to pursue that position at scale. The disclosed evidence supports a company with qualified products, U.S. government engagement, international manufacturing activity, and growing defense programs. It does not yet disclose the economics behind those programs, the pace of production, or the durability of customer demand.

Easy Aerial's next chapter will be written in factories, integration schedules, and field uptime rather than funding language. If the company can make persistent aerial intelligence repeatable across customers and countries, the tether will look less like a constraint and more like the line connecting a drone product to defense infrastructure.