Silicon Valley-Backed Covenant Unveils $500K Mass-Producible 'Anthem' Cruise Missile

The established defense primes have long argued that deep-strike cruise missiles must be exquisite, highly complex systems, justifying multi-million-dollar price tags and slow, deliberate production lines. But a two-year-old defense startup, backed by $250 million in Silicon Valley venture capital, has emerged from stealth to demonstrate that the math of modern warfare can be rewritten. Covenant's new Anthem cruise missile is built largely from commercial off-the-shelf parts, targets a mid-six-figure unit cost, and is designed for a manufacturing network intended to produce up to 12,000 units a year.[1][2][3]

Covenant, a Washington-based company founded in 2024, publicly launched on September 9, 2026, introducing Anthem as a direct response to the rapid depletion of Western precision-strike inventories. The venture is backed by major technology investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund, and has already booked approximately $150 million in initial orders.[1][4]

The company’s executives argue that advanced weapons provide limited deterrence if military stockpiles cannot support an extended conflict. "The reason we've stayed in stealth for so long is that we didn't really want the distraction," Abby Denburg, Covenant's president and chief growth officer, told Tectonic Defense. "We have a platform today that is going through custom qualification with the US government, specifically with the US Army, in order to enable it to be assessed—and then ultimately fielded and in the hands of end users next year."[4]

To achieve the necessary scale, Anthem trades the bespoke engineering of legacy missiles for a distributed supply chain and simplified manufacturing. The weapon is a ground-launched cruise missile powered by a solid rocket motor for takeoff and a heavy-fuel jet engine for cruise flight. Imagery from Pentagon trials shows the weapon being handled on a tricycle-style undercarriage, indicating it uses a runway for launch.[2][3]

While Covenant has not officially disclosed the missile's maximum range, unconfirmed reports place it at approximately 1,200 kilometers (740 miles). The company has confirmed that Anthem carries a payload of more than 200 kilograms (441 pounds). That is substantially smaller than the 1,000-pound-class warhead associated with the Tomahawk, but Covenant argues that the lower cost allows commanders to employ larger numbers of weapons against a given target set, overwhelming air defenses through sheer volume.[2][3]

The system is already well beyond the conceptual phase. Since its maiden flight in August 2025, Anthem has completed more than 200 test flights. These include evaluations conducted with the U.S. Army, such as a live-fire demonstration at the Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center in Tan-Tan, Morocco, in August 2026.[2][3]

Covenant is currently operating under an Other Transaction Agreement with the U.S. Army for an accelerated test and qualification program. The company has also secured a roughly $70 million contract with the U.S. Navy's Rapid Capabilities Office to develop a sea-launched variant, dubbed Maritime Anthem, which includes exportability features designed to make the weapon easier to provide to allied nations.[2][4]

To meet its ambitious production goals, Covenant is establishing a manufacturing footprint across three countries. On the day of its public launch, the company opened a 105,000-square-foot plant in Grand Prairie, Texas. Serial production is slated to begin in the first quarter of 2027, with the facility designed to ramp toward 5,000 units annually.[3][4]

A similarly sized facility in Saxony, Germany, is targeting another 5,000 units a year to supply European customers, while a smaller 32,000-square-foot site in northern Israel is expected to produce up to 2,000 units annually. If all three plants reach their stated capacity, Covenant would be capable of producing 12,000 cruise missiles a year—a rate that dwarfs the output of traditional Western missile plants.[3][4]

The success of Covenant's model now depends on its ability to execute its manufacturing strategy. Scaling from prototype testing to producing thousands of missiles annually presents significant industrial challenges. The company must navigate the complexities of government procurement and final qualification testing, with the next major checkpoint arriving in early 2027 when the Texas facility is scheduled to deliver its first serial production units.[2][4]