Hypersonica raises €100m from US investors to turn a Mach 6 prototype into a European strike missile

The Anglo-German start-up, reportedly valued at about €700m, has yet to fly a manoeuvring vehicle or sign a government customer, and is aiming to field a deep-strike weapon by 2029.

Hypersonica, a Munich-based start-up developing hypersonic missiles for European governments, has raised €100 million in a Series B round co-led by the American venture firms Lightspeed and General Catalyst, the company announced on Monday. Existing investors Plural and 201 Ventures also joined the round.

The round brings the company’s total funding to roughly €126 million, after a €2.5 million seed and a €23.3 million Series A in February. Hypersonica has not disclosed its valuation. The Financial Times reported a figure of around €700m, which the company has not confirmed. The company says Europeans retain majority ownership.

Until now, Europe’s hypersonic efforts have been led largely by big prime contractors working in government-backed consortia. Hypersonica is betting that a venture-backed company can build a long-range strike weapon faster and more cheaply, and the new round is several times larger than everything it had raised before. The founders described the Series B as their move from demonstration to delivery. The money will pay for development, more frequent test flights and expanded manufacturing, and the company expects to create hundreds of engineering and production jobs in Britain and Germany.

Philipp Kerth, a physicist, and Marc Ewenz, an aerospace engineer, met while completing doctorates in hypersonics at Oxford and founded the company in December 2023. It is headquartered in Wessling, near Munich, with a subsidiary in London. General Catalyst led its seed round.

Its main credential so far is a single flight. On 3 February, the Scooter HS-1 test vehicle lifted off from Andøya Space in northern Norway, passed Mach 6 and splashed down inside the designated danger area, according to the launch operator. Hypersonica says it flew more than 300 km. The prototype carried no warhead. Kolbjørn Blix, who heads Andøya’s suborbital division, called it a flawless flight. The company says it is the first privately funded European defence firm to complete a hypersonic missile test, that it moved from concept to launch in nine months, and that its development model cuts costs by more than 80 per cent against conventional programmes. None of those claims has been independently verified.

The flight proved less than a weapon requires. HS-1 was a single-stage vehicle built to gain flight-test experience and collect sensor data for model calibration. It did not demonstrate the guided manoeuvring at hypersonic speed that makes such weapons hard to intercept, and Hypersonica has not disclosed the propulsion, guidance, warhead or airframe configuration of its intended strike system. According to Dealroom, the next tests are planned for 2027 and will focus on guidance and manoeuvrability, and the company intends to develop its own solid-propellant motor. Its stated target is an operational strike capability by 2029.

The lead investors know the field. Lightspeed led the Series A of Castelion, a US developer of low-cost hypersonic weapons, co-led its Series B and also backs Helsing; General Catalyst led Helsing’s €209 million and €450 million rounds in 2023 and 2024. Both firms took part in Castelion’s $1 billion Series C in August, which valued it at $13 billion. “Hypersonica is redefining how advanced defence capability gets built,” said Alexander Schmitt, a partner at Lightspeed. Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, president of General Catalyst, said Europe needed to build critical technologies quickly and “at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems”.

US capital is playing a growing role in European rearmament. American investors now account for 47 per cent of European defence-tech funding, according to Dealroom data cited by Tech Funding News.

Government money is moving more slowly. Britain will commit an initial £770 million to the Deep Precision Strike programme with Germany, an expansion of work under the Trinity House Agreement signed in October 2024. The programme may produce a family of stealth cruise and hypersonic weapons with a range above 2,000 km, expected to enter service in the 2030s. Hypersonica says it is involved in the programme, and Germany and the United Kingdom have been named as possible first customers. No procurement contract has been announced.

Rivals are better funded. Castelion’s latest round alone is several times Hypersonica’s lifetime total. In Europe, Destinus, which began in hypersonics before broadening into precision-strike missiles, was reported by Tech Funding News in May to be seeking €200 million at a valuation above €5 billion.

Hypersonica has yet to sign a government customer, publish a unit price or show that its vehicle can manoeuvre at hypersonic speed. The flights scheduled for 2027 are meant to settle the last of those.