Undisclosed · Other round · Cybersecurity, Defence · Gothenburg, Sweden
Gothenburg-based Monava has secured an undisclosed financing round led by Gungnir Capital, with Foundry Ventures and Hede Capital also participating. Legal adviser Fylgia says the capital will support commercialisation of Monava’s passive acoustic drone-detection technology and expansion of the organisation. Gungnir’s announcement identifies the same investor group and says managing partner Max Villman joined Monava’s board.
Listening where radar is constrained
Monava combines acoustic sensors with machine learning to detect, locate and classify drones from their sound signatures. Because the system listens rather than transmitting, it does not emit a signal that reveals the sensor or can be jammed in the same way as an active emitter. Fylgia says the system is intended to catch threats that radar and other sensors may miss, while Defence Innovation Network Finland describes three-dimensional positioning, all-weather operation and no line-of-sight requirement as company-reported capabilities.
The commercial role is therefore a detection layer, not a complete counter-drone response. Defence forces and critical-infrastructure operators still need command systems and effectors that can act on an alert, but a passive sensor can add another signal to that stack without advertising its own position. That makes integration quality, field calibration and reliable classification as important as raw detection range: customers need alerts that can be trusted and routed into existing operational workflows.
Monava says its systems are already deployed in the Nordics and Ukraine after testing with armed forces. Earlier accelerator material also reports paid projects with defence contractors and civil pilots involving airports, prisons and embassies. Those are useful signs of field demand, but they do not establish repeatable procurement or scaled production. The round is meant to help the company move from demonstrations and early deployments towards a larger delivery organisation.
Monava’s technical roots predate its defence focus. The company first applied acoustic analysis to avalanche detection, then adapted that work to drones after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Reusing an underlying sensing capability across environments can shorten technical learning, but defence scale brings a different execution test: producing consistent hardware, expanding training data across changing drone types and conditions, and supporting deployments through long procurement cycles. The new capital gives Monava room to build those capabilities around technology that has already reached field use.
