The turret weighs less than 50 pounds, emits no radio signal, and fires shotgun rounds at incoming drones. According to the founders of 9 Mothers, a nineteen-person Austin defense startup, multiple units have already been delivered to the Department of Defense—barely a year after the team started building working prototypes.
The $1.6 million sales figure surfaced on the company's Y Combinator profile in mid-2026, an unusually fast revenue marker for a firm this young in an industry notorious for glacial procurement cycles. (One odd detail: the Y Combinator materials repeatedly referred to the customer as "DoW" instead of DoD, what appears to be a typographical error that went uncorrected.) Public contract databases yielded no independent confirmation of the award as of late June, though the startup's website footer does list an active ITAR registration and CAGE code—the bureaucratic prerequisites for doing business with the military.
TechCrunch singled out 9 Mothers as one of eleven standouts from the accelerator's latest Demo Day, reporting that investors were speculating about a potential $35 million contract expansion by year's end. The company declined to comment on that figure.
Whether the speculation proves out or evaporates, the early traction is noteworthy. Defense startups—especially those without Beltway pedigrees or prime contractor lineage—rarely book government revenue before a Series A, let alone ship hardware into operational hands. That 9 Mothers appears to have done both suggests someone inside the Pentagon was willing to take a flyer on an unproven vendor with a specific technical answer to a specific tactical headache.
The Problem: Fast, Cheap, and Closing Fast
That headache has a name: Group 1 FPV drones—the smallest category of military drones, typically under 20 pounds. Small, agile quadcopters, often piloted via hardened video links at close range, have become the infantry weapon of choice from Donbas to Gaza. Legacy counter-drone systems—radio-frequency jammers, long-range interceptors, electronic warfare suites—struggle against them. The drones are too fast, too maneuverable, and often immune to jamming. By the time a conventional system registers the threat, the drone is inside 50 meters. At that range, you're out of options.
EDDA, the turret 9 Mothers has put into production, is designed to solve that closing speed problem. It listens first. Acoustic sensors pick up the high-pitched whine of an approaching rotor, then hand off to an in-house computer vision model for fine tracking. The kill mechanism is kinetic—a shotgun, effective from roughly 10 to 100 meters.
The technical specs are aggressive. The company claims EDDA can slew 5 degrees in under 15 milliseconds and hold tracking accuracy below 1.5 arc minutes. It runs passively by default, emitting zero RF signature—critical in contested environments where electronic emissions invite return fire. (An active radar mode is available for customers who want it, but the passive capability is what operators talk about.) In early June, the startup's Y Combinator Launch page quoted unnamed evaluators saying EDDA was "the only system that's stopped fast Group 1" threats in testing, though no names or agencies were attached to that endorsement.
The entire package fits in roughly half a cubic meter. Light enough to be repositioned by a two-person team, theoretically rugged enough to be left in the field for extended periods. Whether it holds up under sustained operational use is another question.
Betting Against the Incumbents
The counter-drone market is astonishingly crowded. A Defense Daily report from February noted that the Pentagon's Counter-Drone Marketplace had logged over 1,600 products at initial operating capability. Companies like Allen Control Systems—which raised $200 million at a $2.2 billion valuation in June—have years of deployments and established relationships with prime contractors. Fortem Technologies flies interceptor drones. DroneShield builds electronic warfare platforms. Epirus is betting on directed energy.
According to the company's own positioning, 9 Mothers is making a narrower argument: that the ultra-close-range kinetic problem is underserved, and that legacy players are too invested in RF-dependent solutions to pivot quickly. It's a pointed critique. The startup's pitch, in essence, is that most of the industry is solving yesterday's problem while FPV drones have already moved the goalposts.
That bet comes with obvious risks. Defense procurement favors incumbents. Even if EDDA works as advertised, scaling from prototype deliveries to a program of record requires navigating a thicket of testing regimes, compliance certifications, and congressional budget dynamics. Prototypes that dazzle in evaluations die in production all the time.
Still, the company is moving quickly—perhaps more quickly than typical government timelines would suggest. LinkedIn posts from roughly a year ago show early test models and first units heading into manufacturing. By mid-2026, the website listed EDDA as "shipping now," and Y Combinator's public materials confirmed multiple deliveries. The Houston Chronicle covered 9 Mothers in a June feature on Texas counter-drone firms, positioning EDDA alongside a second product called Atla—a belt-fed shotgun system designed for sustained swarm engagements—and two other systems slated for 2027 release.
The Founders: No Pentagon Pedigree
CEO Russell Smith leads the company alongside co-founders Roman Khomenko, who spent eight years as a data scientist at Rainforest QA (another Y Combinator alum), and Bogdan Pyzh, who serves as COO. None of their public profiles include traditional defense-industry backgrounds—no Raytheon tours, no DARPA fellowships, no Beltway consulting stints.
That tracks with a broader shift. Software and AI talent from commercial tech has been crossing over into national security applications with increasing frequency, often bringing different development cadences and product philosophies. Whether that translates to sustainable businesses in a sector that rewards patient capital and institutional relationships is an open question.
The Austin team has grown to nineteen people, with eleven open roles listed on the company's career page as of late June. Y Combinator's public congratulations post in mid-June emphasized the "multiple contracts" milestone and reiterated that systems had been "sold and delivered." That language, paired with TechCrunch's reporting, suggests at least initial product-market fit with a subset of DoD buyers willing to experiment.
What Happens Next
Investors have been circulating ambitious projections—TechCrunch's June piece cited venture sources claiming a billion-dollar pipeline and a valuation "upward of $200 million"—but those figures remain unconfirmed by the company and should be read as market chatter rather than official guidance. If a $35 million contract expansion were to materialize, it would represent a dramatic scaling from initial deliveries. It would also raise the stakes considerably. Government programs that grow that fast attract scrutiny: technical audits, competitor protests, congressional inquiries.
The immediate test is operational. Does EDDA perform in theater conditions over sustained periods? Do maintenance requirements prove manageable? Can the company manufacture at scale without sacrificing quality? Early sales to the Pentagon are one thing. Becoming a program of record is another entirely.
For now, 9 Mothers has done something rare: shipped hardware, booked revenue, and convinced at least some corner of the defense establishment that a nineteen-person startup in Austin has cracked a problem that larger, better-funded competitors have been wrestling with for years. Whether that conviction holds—and whether the company can build a durable business around it—will become clearer in the months ahead.
