- Cambridge Aerospace closes a $300 million Series C at a $3.4 billion valuation, led by DFJ Growth.
- The valuation has grown by a factor of 2.6 since its Series B four months earlier.
- It’s now raised roughly $636 million in total in a European defence market where rivals have just raised far more.
A $20,000 Shahed drone can force a defender to fire a $1 million interceptor missile at it. That math is bankrupting NATO air defence budgets, and it’s the problem Cambridge Aerospace says it’s built to solve. The Cambridge, England-based startup has closed a $300 million Series C at a $3.4 billion valuation, led by DFJ Growth, after TFN reported in June that it was in talks for a $3.5 billion valuation.
“This raise is testament to the incredible work of the entire Cambridge Aerospace team. The addition of these funds will allow us to continue to scale our manufacturing and our delivery to meet the pace of threats, and the needs of Allied nations,” said Steven Barrett, the company’s chief executive.
The round follows a $200 million Series B at a $1.3 billion valuation in April 2026, co-led by Elad Gil & Co and Spark Capital, representing a 2.6x jump in four months. Add the $136 million it disclosed across pre-seed, seed and Series A in September 2025, and total funding sits at roughly $636 million.
From lab bench to Ministry of Defence contracts
Cambridge Aerospace was founded in 2024 by Barrett, a former MIT aerospace engineer now Regius Professor of Engineering at Cambridge; Chris Sylvan, formerly Anduril’s UK business development director; and Junaid Hussain, founder of several earlier technology companies, including Agon, which raised $30 million for European defence AI infrastructure this year.
Its first product, Skyhammer, is a low-cost interceptor built to shoot down Shahed-type attack drones at speeds of up to 30 kilometres an hour and 700 kilometres an hour. It’s already supplying the UK Ministry of Defence under the Low-Cost Effectors & Autonomous Platforms programme, part of a wider wave of UK state backing that has also seen £580 million go to Porton Down and £1.6 billion to defence startups more broadly.
Defence Secretary Wes Streeting called Skyhammer “an example of the low-cost interceptor missiles our Armed Forces need to deter adversaries and keep our country safe,” adding the deal is “exactly what our unicorn scheme is designed to create.”
Cambridge Aerospace is also developing Starhammer, a faster missile interceptor, alongside the Looking Glass radar system and Nightstar, its own solid rocket motor. It has grown to more than 250 employees, two-thirds of whom are in engineering roles, across the UK, Germany, Poland, Norway, Ukraine and Australia.
Europe’s defence tech race accelerates
Cambridge Aerospace is entering a market where the numbers keep resetting. Stark closed €500 million in June 2026 at a valuation above 3.5 billion euros, Helsing raised $1.8 billion at an $18 billion valuation in July 2026, and Quantum Systems closed $1.2 billion at an $8 billion valuation on July 2.
Unlike those three, which build strike drones and battlefield software, Cambridge Aerospace sits on the defensive side, intercepting threats rather than launching them. The anti-drone market is projected to grow from $3.88 billion in 2026 to $16.45 billion by 2034, according to Fortune Business Insights, as governments try to close that cost gap.
DFJ Growth, the round’s new lead investor, has previously backed Anduril, SpaceX, Neuralink, Tesla and Coinbase.
“Cambridge Aerospace is solving one of the most pressing challenges of modern warfare. We surveyed the global landscape and identified Cambridge as having the best team and technology to build the most advanced and modern air defence infrastructure for Europe and its allies,” said Randy Glein, DFJ Growth’s founder and managing partner.
Returning investors include Lux, Accel, and Lakestar; Never Lift, a New York firm that has backed the company since its earliest rounds; and Ora Global, the resilience-focused spinout of Exor’s venture arm, which has also backed Mistral and Neuralink.
Cambridge Aerospace has already proven it can build a cheaper interceptor, with real Ministry of Defence orders to show for it. Less clear is whether “cheap” stays cheap once Helsing, Quantum Systems and Stark start eyeing the defensive side of the market too, and whether Europe’s governments can afford all four at their current valuations.
