- PDKINEMATICS has raised €2 million to grow Gannet, a guidance system that attaches to regular drone munitions and steers them accurately from up to 700 metres, six times higher than unguided options.
- While Europe’s top-funded drone startups focus on building complete platforms, PDKINEMATICS believes the real need is in guidance. Instead of competing, they sell precision systems to manufacturers.
- Coinvest Capital and Iron Wolf Capital co-led the seed round. The system has already been tested in Ukraine and chosen for Lithuania’s Iron Wolf 2026 military exercises.
Helsing raised $1.2 billion, and Quantum Systems closed €180 million. Europe’s big drone companies are competing to build full autonomous platforms, including airframes and AI. But this Lithuanian startup believes they are missing the real issue.
Founded in Vilnius in 2025, PDKINEMATICS has raised €2 million in seed funding, co-led by Coinvest Capital and Iron Wolf Capital. The funds will help develop a guidance system that turns low-cost, unguided drone munitions into accurate weapons. Angel investors focused on defense and deep-tech founders also joined, bringing total funding to €3 million.
Rapolas Markevičius has a background in private equity, while Simonas Stasevičius is an aerospace engineer. Later in 2025, Dominykas Rinkevičius joined to lead product development. They all believe that older precision-guidance systems were made for expensive missiles, not for the high-volume, low-cost warfare seen in eastern Ukraine. Gannet is built for this need: it is small, affordable, and quick to deploy.
The problem nobody is fixing
Military estimates say about 300,000 munitions are dropped from drones over Ukraine each month. Most lack targeting guidance, so pilots must fly dangerously low, within range of small arms, to make up for the inaccuracy.
The Gannet system from PDKINEMATICS attaches to regular drone munitions and guides them from heights of up to 700 metres.
“We started working on precision guidance for UAVs because the battlefield was demanding something that did not exist: surgical precision at altitude, but at the cost and form factor of a mass-produced drone munition,” Markevičius says.
Supplying the ecosystem
Instead of competing with companies like Helsing, which is close to raising $1.2 billion at an $18 billion valuation, or Quantum Systems, which closed €180 million at a €3 billion valuation in late 2025, PDKINEMATICS sells its products to manufacturers like them. PDKINEMATICS builds the guidance systems, while others build the platforms. This makes the company a supplier to Europe’s drone hardware ecosystem, not a competitor.
The company has already shown its model works. Gannet has been used in Ukraine and chosen for Lithuania’s Iron Wolf 2026 military exercises, earning a government endorsement that most early-stage startups can only hope for.
The €2 million will help expand deployments across Europe and Ukraine, increase manufacturing in the Baltics, and develop new electronic warfare countermeasures.
“Precision-guided systems are the future of modern warfare. PDKINEMATICS bridges one of the most important gaps between Ukrainian battlefield innovation and Europe’s future defence infrastructure,” notes Žygimantas Susnys, founding partner at Iron Wolf Capital.
Defence tech venture funding hit new highs in 2026, with investors putting over $14.6 billion into military, national security, and law enforcement companies in the first five months alone. This already beats the previous annual record of $9.6 billion set in 2025. Most of this money is going to platform companies.
PDKINEMATICS shows that there is still a big gap between drones that can fly and drones that can actually hit their targets. The company proves you do not need to build an airframe to solve this problem.
