ZeroMark
ZeroMark builds a weapon-mounted AI fire-control system that turns an ordinary infantry rifle into an auto-aiming counter-drone weapon, putting the last line of drone defence on the individual soldier.
Background
ZeroMark was founded in September 2022 by Joel Anderson, a US Navy veteran who went on to serve as MongoDB's first chief information security officer and chief information officer.
The company is based in New York, with reporting also placing operations in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, and remains small — around six employees by one 2026 count.
Its product is a fire-control system that attaches to most infantry rifles in roughly thirty seconds. It combines a compact sensor and compute unit with a motorised buttstock: the system tracks the drone, computes the firing solution, and makes micro-corrections to the weapon's aim so the round intersects the target.
Anderson describes it as an AI targeting layer, and frames the objective as making the dismounted soldier as dominant on the ground as an F-22 is in the air.
The premise is that every other counter-drone layer — jammers, radars, interceptors, directed energy — is a system the infantryman does not carry, and that the drone which gets through is a problem for a person with a rifle.
Financial footing
- $7M seed led by a16z and Ground Up Ventures (May 2024) plus a 2025 strategic round
- Demonstrated in a US Marine Corps live-fire exercise and reported deployed with special mission units abroad
- Backers: Andreessen Horowitz (American Dynamism), Ground Up Ventures, Beaten Zone Venture Partners
ZeroMark raised approximately $7 million in a seed round led by Ground Up Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, announced May 2024, followed by a strategic round in 2025 in which Beaten Zone Venture Partners participated. Investors include a16z's American Dynamism practice.
No revenue, valuation or contract value has been disclosed. Total disclosed funding of roughly $7 million plus an unquantified strategic round makes ZeroMark one of the most lightly capitalised companies in the US counter-UAS field, which is either capital efficiency or a constraint depending on whether the product needs volume manufacturing to matter.
Major customers & contracts
No signed US government contract is confirmed in the sources reviewed. The company states it has been deployed with special mission units abroad and has said it is in discussions with the Pentagon; separate reporting says the system was demonstrated in a US Marine Corps live-fire exercise.
Treat the deployment claim as company-stated. For a firm of this size, special-operations use without a public contract is a plausible and common early path, but it is not independently documented here.
Leadership & contact surface
Leadership: Joel Anderson
Official site: https://www.zeromark.com
Competitive position
ZeroMark occupies the soldier-carried end of counter-UAS, where the competition is thinner than it looks. Epirus and Fortem defend sites; Allen Control Systems' Bullfrog is an autonomous weapon station; DroneShield and MyDefence sell handheld jammers that fail against fibre-optic and autonomous drones.
Israel's Smart Shooter, tracked in this directory, is the closest direct comparison — a fire-control optic for small arms with an established SMASH product line and a far longer track record.
Against Smart Shooter, ZeroMark's differentiation is the motorised buttstock: rather than only telling the shooter when to fire, it physically corrects the aim.
That is a harder engineering problem and, if it works at scale, a meaningfully better answer for a moving quadcopter.
The strategic advantage of this whole category is that it is immune to the trend breaking everyone else's counter-drone business.
A drone on fibre-optic control with AI terminal guidance cannot be jammed, and it can still be shot. The disadvantage is range: a rifle engages at a few hundred metres, which means the drone has already arrived.
Battlefield relevance
No independently confirmed combat use. ZeroMark says its system has been deployed with special mission units abroad, and it has been demonstrated in a US Marine Corps live-fire exercise. No engagement results are public.
Sources & verification
- https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240529043192/en/ZeroMark-Secures-$7M-in-Seed-Funding-for-Handheld-Iron-Dome
- https://www.beatenzone.vc/beaten-zone-venture-partners-backs-zeromark-to-deliver-soldier-level-counter-drone-capability/
- https://infinitefrontiers.io/conversations/building-a-gun-that-never-misses-with-zeromarks-joel-anderson/
- https://www.zeromark.com/about
- https://www.yahoo.com/news/a16z-backed-zeromark-wants-soldiers-185656486.html
- https://yespress.io/zeromark-inc