Startup accelerator Y Combinator is backing its first weapons startup, which claims it can build missiles that are smaller and cheaper than its competitors.
“Ares is developing a new class of anti-ship cruise missile that will deliver the capabilities the Department of Defense requires at one-tenth the size and one-tenth the cost,” Ares Industries co-founders Devan Plantamura and Alex Tseng said in a post on the YC website.
The two worked at other defense startups before teaming up to found Elias Industries in May of this year.
YC partner Jared Friedman said Ares Industries could play a key role if China were to attack Taiwan.
“While the world focuses on conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, the world is much closer to war in the Taiwan Strait than most people realize,” Friedman said in an Aug. 20 post on X.
“In a war with Taiwan, we would be firing thousands of anti-ship missiles a week, a stockpile that would be depleted within days. The ability to produce enough competitive missiles is the best way to deter war,” he continued.
The investment in Ares Industries marks YC’s first investment in a defense startup.
This famous startup accelerator is best known for its software-related selections, with top companies such as Airbnb, DoorDash, Dropbox, and Reddit among its selections.
But Friedman has high hopes for the young weapons maker, which he says could do for missiles what Elon Musk’s SpaceX did for rockets.
“When SpaceX entered the space launch vehicle market in 2002, Lockheed Martin and Boeing formed a duopoly. Similarly, today there are only two major suppliers of cruise missiles: Lockheed Martin and Raytheon,” he wrote to X last week.
“And just like when ULA was making all the space rockets, the missiles these companies make are bloated by years of cost-plus and no-bid contracts,” he added, referring to the Lockheed Martin-Boeing joint venture.
In a post on the YC website, Plantamura and Tseng said they built and tested multiple prototypes over the summer.
“We went from inception to flight testing of our own design in just 11 weeks, and expect to deliver an initial operational missile system to our first customer by mid-2025,” they wrote.
Representatives for Ares Industries and YC did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment sent outside of regular business hours.
To be sure, YC isn’t the only Silicon Valley company looking to disrupt the defense sector.
During a speech at Stanford University in April, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said he was working with Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun to mass-produce drones for the war between Ukraine and Russia.
“Because of how the system works, I’m now a licensed arms dealer,” Schmidt said in a speech that was briefly posted to Stanford University’s YouTube channel this month before being removed.
