Distributed Spectrum
Distributed Spectrum builds low-cost networked RF sensors that detect, classify and geolocate emitters — jammers, drones, tactical radios — founded by three Harvard undergraduates who took a gap year.
Background
Distributed Spectrum was founded in 2020 by Alex Wulff, Ben Harpe and Isaac Struhl, then Harvard undergraduates, out of Wulff's senior thesis on low-cost radio-spectrum monitoring.
The three took a year off during the pandemic to build the company and never went back; Wulff is chief executive, Harpe chief operating officer and Struhl chief technology officer. The company is based in New York.
Its product, RF Vision, pairs inexpensive networked sensors with machine-learning software to give real-time awareness of the radio-frequency environment — detecting, identifying, localising and classifying signals including GPS jammers, drone control links and tactical emitters.
The company describes the goal as a detection mesh: deploy sensors widely and cheaply enough that spectrum awareness becomes ambient rather than a specialist function, at a cost the founders put two orders of magnitude below existing systems.
Development contracts have covered soldier-portable devices that alert on approaching drones.
Financial footing
- $25M Series A (~$29M total)
- ~$12M in development contracts with the Army, Air Force and Navy
- AFRL Phase 2 SBIR awarded Apr 2024 with a $1.248M ceiling
- Company reports eight-figure revenue and tripled headcount
- Backers: Conviction, Shield Capital, Nat Friedman, Felicis, XFund
The company raised a $25 million Series A led by Conviction, Shield Capital and Nat Friedman, with participation from existing investors Felicis and XFund and angels including Stanley McChrystal.
Total funding is reported at about $29 million across early-stage and Series A rounds.
Unusually for a company at this stage, it has meaningful revenue. Distributed Spectrum reported closing $7 million in contracts within sixty days with a team of seven and founder-led sales, and has since described eight-figure annual revenue and tripled headcount.
Forbes put development contracts with the Army, Air Force and Navy at $12 million.
That revenue profile — real contracts before a large round, rather than after — is the strongest fact in the file and separates it from most defence-tech Series A companies, which are priced on capability.
Major customers & contracts
The US Army, Air Force and Navy hold development contracts with the company, totalling roughly $12 million by Forbes' account, with the company separately describing $7 million closed in a sixty-day window and significant pathways to larger procurements.
The Air Force Research Laboratory awarded a Phase 2 SBIR in April 2024 with a ceiling of $1.248 million through June 2025, following earlier NSF-backed work. The company also describes intelligence-community customers.
Leadership & contact surface
Leadership: Alex Wulff
Official site: https://www.distributedspectrum.com
Competitive position
Spectrum sensing is contested from several directions. CX2, tracked here, builds airborne electronic-warfare hardware; Hidden Level sells passive RF drone detection; DroneShield and MyDefence cover the handheld detection market; and the primes hold the high-end signals-intelligence business.
Distributed Spectrum's differentiation is price per sensor. A detection mesh only works if nodes are cheap enough to scatter, and the founders' claim of a two-orders-of-magnitude cost reduction is the entire product thesis: not better sensitivity than a prime's system, but enough sensitivity at a price that permits density.
Density is what turns detection into geolocation, because multiple cheap sensors triangulate what one expensive sensor cannot.
The risk is that the same trend eroding electronic warfare erodes detection too. A fibre-optic drone emits nothing to detect.
RF sensing retains value against jammers, radios and the large majority of drones that still use radio control, but the fastest-growing segment of the threat is going quiet, and that bounds the market in a way a cost advantage does not fix.
Battlefield relevance
No confirmed combat use. The company's work is at the development-contract and prototype stage with US services, including soldier-portable drone-alert devices.
Its sensing problem set — GPS jamming, drone control links, contested spectrum — is drawn directly from conditions demonstrated in Ukraine, where electronic warfare has shaped operations more than in any prior conflict.
Sources & verification
- https://www.distributedspectrum.com/series-a-announcement
- https://www.forbes.com/profile/distributed-spectrum/
- https://medium.com/@distributedspectrum/why-we-built-distributed-spectrum-ff9ebd026da2
- https://seas.harvard.edu/news/finding-right-frequency
- https://defensetechsignals.beehiiv.com/p/distributedspectrum
- https://theaiinsider.tech/2025/04/07/harvard-trio-transforms-electronic-warfare-with-ai-powered-radio-detection/
- https://www.blackflag.vc/position/mission-operations-lead