CX2
"find.fix.finish"
El Segundo defense startup building AI-enabled electronic warfare systems: the Wraith Group 2 RF-reconnaissance drone and the Vadris RF-seeker for FPV drones.
CX2 is a U.S. defense technology company founded in 2024 in El Segundo, California, that develops AI-enabled hardware and software to detect, locate, disrupt and defend the electromagnetic (radio-frequency) spectrum. The company frames its mission as spectrum dominance for the United States and its allies across land, air, sea and space, and organises its capabilities along a find, fix, finish chain: detecting and tracking RF emitters over wide areas, locating and classifying them even under jamming, and handing emitter coordinates to kinetic or electronic warfare effects such as loitering munitions and crewed systems. Its systems use an open architecture intended to plug into existing sensors and command-and-control tools.
The founding team, as reported in November 2025, included chief executive Nathan Mintz, a former electronic warfare and radar engineer at Raytheon and Boeing and a co-founder of directed-energy company Epirus; president Mark Trefgarne, previously co-founder of video advertising firm LiveRail; Porter Smith, a former Andreessen Horowitz investor and Defense Innovation Unit fellow; and Lee Thompson, formerly head of RF engineering at SpaceX. CX2 raised a seed round of about $15 million in 2024 with Andreessen Horowitz and 8VC, followed in May 2025 by a $31 million Series A led by Point72 Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC and Pax Ventures. Its website lists a16z, 8VC and Point72 as backers and states that its products are built in El Segundo.
Wraith, unveiled in December 2025, is an autonomous Group 2 uncrewed aircraft for airborne RF reconnaissance and targeting. The aircraft weighs about 32 lb, is deployed by a two-person team and can launch within minutes. It navigates with visual odometry and multiband GNSS, uses NDAA-compliant components and is designed to find hostile emitters such as GPS jammers, FPV-drone jammers, drone control links and ground stations. In company testing it maintained accurate geolocation while subjected to a 300 W GPS jammer, and it produces a spectral heat map that operators can confirm visually before targeting. Wraith was flown during military evaluations at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, and connects to CX2's spectrum operating environment for a launch, map, confirm and target workflow.
Vadris, announced on November 5, 2025, is a compact RF-seeker payload that mounts on first-person-view (FPV) attack drones. Four antennas measure the angle of arrival of an enemy drone's control signals and triangulate the probable location of the pilot, which is shown as an overlay in the friendly operator's goggles; the company's tagline for it is to hunt the archer, not the arrow. CX2 describes Vadris as platform-agnostic, priced below $10,000 per unit and effective at a range of several kilometres. In trials reported at launch, operators with about five minutes of training located the ground controller in seven out of seven runs, in about three minutes, across a roughly four-square-kilometre urban area. A later software-defined version targets common drone control links including ExpressLRS, TBS Crossfire and DJI OcuSync.
CX2's primary customers are frontline U.S. military units. According to Contrary Research, Vadris was down-selected in November 2025 for the Defense Innovation Unit's Project G.I. (paired with Neros's Archer drone), CX2 received a roughly $2 million DIU award in April 2026 for 30 Wraith systems and additional RF deception units, more than 450 Vadris systems had been fielded by October 2026, and the company was selected for NATO's DIANA accelerator in December 2025. In May 2026 it opened a 30,000 square foot headquarters and manufacturing facility in El Segundo. The company website also links to a separate offering called Spectrum Imperative.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
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Company Facts
Founded
2024
Primary Role
Manufacturer
Company Size
-
Primary Region
North America
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Early-Stage VC
Funding Total
-
