Modern defence systems need to respond more quickly and operate at faster speeds than older aircraft can handle. As global threats evolve, there’s growing demand for high-speed, unmanned vehicles to meet battlefield needs.
That capability gap is the market Hermeus was founded to close, and the reason the Atlanta-born, Los Angeles-headquartered defence startup has just raised $350 million in a Series C round that values it at $1 billion.
Founded in 2018 by AJ Piplica, Hermeus is building unmanned high-Mach aircraft for the US Department of Defence. The round comprises $200 million in equity, led by Khosla Ventures, with continued backing from Canaan Partners, Founders Fund, RTX Ventures, Bling Capital, and In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture arm.
New equity investors include Cox Enterprises through its venture fund, Socium Ventures; Destiny Tech100; Georgia Tech Foundation; 137 Ventures; and GSBackers. A further $150 million in debt capital comes from Silicon Valley Bank, Pinegrove Venture Partners, Hercules Capital and Trinity Capital, structured to limit dilution as Hermeus scales hardware manufacturing. Total funding now exceeds $500 million.
Hermeus runs a sequenced test programme called Quarterhorse: each aircraft is faster than the last. Mk 1 flew subsonically in early 2024 and was developed in roughly 200 days. Quarterhorse Mk 2.1, the size of an F-16, recently completed its second test flight. Supersonic is next, followed by Mach 3.3, then eventually Mach 5. The military product is Darkhorse, a dedicated hypersonic unmanned aircraft for US defence customers.
Unlike Boom Supersonic, Venus Aerospace, and Destinus, Hermeus uses turbine engines that allow conventional runway takeoffs
At $1 billion, Hermeus is a unicorn on paper. Whether it becomes one by outcome depends on whether Quarterhorse delivers before procurement patience shifts back to Lockheed or Northrop. The supersonic test is next. After that, the physics gets harder.
