Volund Raises $12M Seed for Low-Cost Defense Engines
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Volund Manufacturing has raised $12 million in a Seed round to scale production of propulsion systems for defense platforms. The company, based in Huntington Beach, California, is building low-cost engines for attritable systems, meaning platforms designed to be used in numbers and not necessarily recovered.
The round was co-led by Root Ventures and Squadra Ventures, with participation from Marlinspike, First In and Output Ventures. Founded in 2024 by Eric Hostetler and Ken Spaulding, Volund draws on a team of veterans from Anduril, Blue Origin and Apple, a pedigree that spans defense technology, aerospace and high-volume manufacturing.
The company’s first product is a 100-pound-thrust-class turbojet engine intended for attritable cruise missiles and unmanned aircraft. The core idea is to make propulsion cheap enough to field at scale, which has become a pressing concern in defense as militaries look at conflicts where large numbers of low-cost systems can matter more than a handful of expensive ones. Volund uses a vertically integrated factory model to bring down costs and keep production under its own control.
The company is already working with major integrators, including Anduril, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, relationships that give it a path to real programs if its engines perform. Volund plans to use the funding to advance engineering development and flight testing, with prototype engine demonstrations expected later this year and initial production targeted for early 2027.
The timeline is aggressive for hardware as complex as a turbojet engine, but the demand signal in defense for affordable, mass-producible propulsion is strong. With $12 million and a team that has built hard things before, Volund is betting it can move from prototype to production on a schedule that matches the urgency its customers are expressing.