- Hypersonica has raised €100 million in a Series B round co-led by Lightspeed and General Catalyst.
- The company says it went from concept to a Mach 6 test flight in nine months.
- The new funding will accelerate development of the deep strike system, enable more test flights, and expand operations and manufacturing in Europe.
Hypersonica, a German-British defence startup based near Munich with a London office, closed a €100 million Series B. Lightspeed and General Catalyst are the US VC leads, with Plural and 201 Ventures also joining in. Hypersonica has raised about €126 million in total, including a € 2.5 million seed and a €23.3m Series A.
The company hasn’t disclosed its valuation, but the FT, citing unnamed sources, has reported it at around €700m. The new funding will accelerate development of the deep strike system, enable more test flights, and expand operations and manufacturing in Europe. The funding is expected to create hundreds of engineering and manufacturing jobs in the UK and Germany.
From an ambitious idea to Mach 6 in nine months
Co-founders Philipp Kerth, a physicist, and Dr Marc Ewenz, an aerospace engineer, are both German and met while doing their PhDs in hypersonics at Oxford. Kerth had a Rhodes scholarship following his BSc and went straight into his PhD. They founded Hypersonica in December 2023, with early backing from TUM Venture Labs.
General Catalyst led the seed round. Kerth says that when he first met Jeannette zu Fürstenberg of General Catalyst, the wild idea became a proper strategic project. Plural led the Series A, announced on 10th February, with SPRIND, which is Germany’s Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation, General Catalyst, and 201 Ventures also participating.
The company announced the test results alongside the funding. Andøya Space in Norway launched the HS-1 prototype, and according to Hypersonics, it reached speeds over Mach 6 (over 7400 km/h) and flew more than 300 km. The prototype was unarmoured. Hypersonica says no other privately funded European defence company has achieved this, and that it took just nine months to go from concept to flight-ready.
Cost effectiveness is a major part of Hypersonica’s approach. They claim their development model is 80% cheaper than the conventional approach.
Two US investors, one European weapon
Both of the lead investors have relevant experience in the space. Lightspeed led Castelion’s Series A, co-led its Series B, and is also an investor in Helsing. General Catalyst led Helsing’s €209 million Series B in 2023 and €450 million Series C in 2024. Both of them were part of Castelion’s $1 billion Series C at a $13 billion valuation in August.
Alexander Schmitt, a partner at Lightspeed, said, “Hypersonica is redefining how advanced defence capability gets built. The team pairs deep technical expertise with exceptional speed of execution, and the strength of our support reflects our confidence in both the technology and their ability to deliver.”
Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, president and managing director at General Catalyst, added, “Strategic autonomy begins with the ability to build critical technologies at speed, at scale and at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems. That is exactly what Philipp, Marc, and the Hypersonica team are doing. They combine the ambition to tackle one of Europe’s most critical capability gaps with the engineering excellence to actually solve it. As Europe invests in its security and resilience, it will be companies like Hypersonica that play a defining role in translating ambition into real capability.”
Ian Hogart, a partner at Plural, who led its Series A, noted that the founders have “an obsessive focus on first-principles engineering”.
This round is part of a wider trend. US investors now account for 47% of European defence tech funding, with General Catalyst and Lightspeed being among the most active, according to Dealroom data. The sector is expected to hit a record $10.5 billion this year, with Munich getting 40% of the funding.
What the funding still needs to show
Kerth and Ewenz called this funding round a move into a new phase. They said: “We have shown that next-generation hypersonic systems can be developed in Europe faster and more affordably than conventional wisdom suggests. And we’re proud to be backed by investors who share our conviction that Europe should be able to develop and produce advanced strategic capabilities itself.”
Government funding for this area is proceeding very slowly. The UK’s Defence Investment Plan allocates £770 million over four years for a joint programme with Germany under the Trinity House Agreement. The programme covers stealth cruise and hypersonic weapons with a range in excess of 2,000km, with delivery projected for the 2030s.
Competitors have vastly more funding. Castelion has over $500 million in US military contracts. Hermeus hit $1bn in April. In Europe, Destinus started in hypersonics but now appears to be moving into a broader range of precision-strike missiles. Tech Funding News reported in May that Destinus was seeking €200 million at a valuation over €5 billion.
MarketsandMarkets forecast the hypersonic weapons market at $6.8bn in 2023 and $14.5bn by 2030.
The money, the flight record and two funds with a hypersonic track record are in place. A named buyer, a manoeuvring flight and a per-missile price are not. The next test flight will say more about this round than the round itself.
