Traysar emerges from stealth with $25M seed for subterranean defence tech
What's the deal? Traysar IndustriesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a startup claiming to be the world's first subterranean defence tech company, has emerged from stealth with a $25M seed round led by Silent VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The company launched publicly at the 2026 Reindustrialize Summit in Detroit on June 16.
Other investors include Lux Capital, Ora GlobalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, NeverLift VCDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, ManaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Impatient VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, New VistaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Entree Capital, and angel investor Steve BlankDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The Austin, Texas-based company was co-founded by Yadin Soffer, Asher Katz, and Gilad Adin.
Traysar is building autonomous platforms designed to operate underground — specifically, a tunnel-breaching exploration system that maps and clears contested subterranean networks, and a rapid-burrowing platform that creates underground access points and delivers payloads beneath the surface. Its engineering team includes early hires from SpaceX and The Boring Company.
Why now? The US Army estimates more than 10,000 known military facilities are hidden underground worldwide. Adversaries are increasingly investing in deeply buried infrastructure — China is building underground facilities to conceal military assets, Iran's nuclear bunkers sit beyond conventional reach, and Hamas constructed extensive tunnel networks beneath Gaza.
Meanwhile, defence spending has a "vertical bias," as the company puts it: hundreds of billions flow into aerial systems like missiles and drones, while the underground domain remains largely unaddressed. "For decades, we have allowed a massive capability gap to widen beneath our feet," said Soffer.
What could go wrong? Underground autonomous systems face enormous engineering challenges — navigating unpredictable geology, operating without GPS, and maintaining communications through rock and soil. Traysar is essentially trying to create a new military domain from scratch, which means it needs not just working hardware but buy-in from defence procurement bureaucracies that move slowly.
The company also faces the classic defence tech startup dilemma: long sales cycles with government customers, export restrictions, and the risk that larger incumbents could move into the space once the market is validated.
The signal: Silent Ventures' track record here is telling — its prior seed bets include Saronic and Castelion, both of which rapidly scaled into major defence contractors, suggesting the firm sees a similar trajectory for subterranean systems. With Lux Capital also on the cap table, Traysar has assembled an investor syndicate that has collectively backed some of the most consequential defence tech startups of the past five years, underscoring growing VC conviction that the underground domain represents the next untapped frontier in military spending.
Read more: StreetInsider
