Covenant, a defense tech company with operations in the United States, Germany, and Israel, emerged from stealth on Monday with the public debut of Anthem, a long‑range, heavy‑payload weapon system designed for mass production.
The announcement comes as Western militaries are confronting growing shortages in precision‑strike munitions. Ongoing conflicts such as in Ukraine and Iran have depleted missile stockpiles faster than primes can replenish them.
Covenant’s flagship system, Anthem, is built to deliver heavy payloads at extended ranges while remaining affordable enough to produce in large quantities. The company has disclosed relatively little about Anthem’s specific performance characteristics, including its precise range, payload, and unit cost.
According to the company, most of Anthem’s components are commercial‑off‑the‑shelf, supported by long‑term agreements for critical parts. Covenant says this approach allows the missile to be produced quickly and reliably, even during wartime, by drawing on supply chains across allied nations.
Covenant says Anthem was designed as an end‑to‑end deep‑strike system that simplifies transport, storage, launch, and reload. The company has also developed its own mission‑planning and command‑and‑control software to enable coordinated mass‑launch operations.
Covenant was founded in 2024 by Michael Kaufman, a former investor at Thiel Capital. The company has raised $250 million across three funding rounds led by major American venture firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Lux, 8VC, Aleph, and Lightspeed.
Global production
The company opened a 105,000‑square‑foot production facility in Dallas, Texas, alongside a 110,000‑square‑foot site in Leipzig in the German state of Saxony, and a 32,000‑square‑foot facility in northern Israel. Covenant says the US plant will begin serial production in early 2027 and ramp toward 5,000 units per year.
Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post understands that the company aims to manufacture 1,000 missiles per year at its German site starting next year.
Israel’s defense industry has long been a leader in developing autonomous systems, long‑range strike capabilities, and rapid‑production technologies. Covenant’s facility in northern Israel supports engineering and manufacturing, and the company draws heavily on Israeli defense tech talent.
The company is also working across the various branches of the US military and has conducted an unusually high tempo of testing over the past year, launching Anthem over 200 times, including multiple flight tests with the US Army both in the US and abroad.
In addition to its ground‑launched version, Covenant is working with the US Navy’s Rapid Capabilities Office on a maritime variant, a project valued at roughly $70 million with cost‑share components and export‑acceleration features. The company is also operating under an Other Transaction Agreement with the US Army for accelerated testing and qualification.
Quantity matters
Covenant’s leadership says Anthem was built to address a widening gap in Western long‑range strike capacity.
“When you look at our adversaries, you see thousands of hardened targets, beyond the range of current capabilities,” said Michael Kaufman, Co-Founder and CEO of Covenant. “Anthem was built to credibly hold those targets at risk in a prolonged conflict. If our stockpiles run thin, so does our deterrence."
Kathleen Hicks, former US deputy secretary of defense now an advisor to Covenant, said the system aligns with the Pentagon’s Replicator Initiative, which aims to rapidly scale affordable autonomous and long‑range capabilities.
“That same focus is needed to drive production and delivery of affordable capabilities at higher ranges and larger payloads. Covenant has built Anthem in direct alignment with Replicator's principles,” she said.
Mike Garcia, former US representative and advisor to Covenant, said that while the West doesn’t “lack advanced weapons, we lack enough of them, and that’s a production question as much as a technology one. Anthem is Covenant's answer, a missile designed from day one to be built in the numbers a real fight demands."
The company has booked approximately $150 million in orders so far, including qualification, R&D, and production contracts, with additional awards expected later this year. And as the company moves into full production, the company says its success will be measured not by announcements but by delivery.
“Now the measure of our success is execution,” said Abby Denburg, Covenant’s president and chief growth officer. “Delivering mission‑critical capability on time, at scale, and with the performance our customers expect.”