Hypersonica, the British-German developer of hypersonic long-range missiles, has raised €100m in a Series B co-led by Lightspeed and General Catalyst. The round is roughly 4.3 times the size of the €23.2m Series A it closed in February.
Hypersonica was founded in 2023. It has its headquarters in Munich and a subsidiary in London, and is building deep-strike missiles that fly at hypersonic speeds. Its pitch is that it can deliver long-range strike systems faster and more cheaply than established defence primes, while keeping the technology under European control.
The company is part of the Trinity House Agreement, the UK–German defence pact that commits both countries to jointly developing long-range conventional weapons, including hypersonic systems with ranges of more than 2,000km. Hypersonica is targeting 2029 to deliver hypersonic deep-strike capability.
The deal
Lightspeed and General Catalyst, two US firms that have become some of the most active backers of European defence start-ups, co-led the €100m Series B. Existing investors Plural and 201 Ventures also took part.
For General Catalyst, this is a step up from the Series A, when it joined as a participant. It now sits alongside Lightspeed as co-lead. Plural, which led the €23.2m Series A, and 201 Ventures both followed on, keeping the February syndicate on the cap table.
The valuation was not disclosed, and the company has not given a split of the round between the lead and follow-on investors. The two rounds bring total disclosed funding to about €123m, less than three years after Hypersonica was founded.
Use of funds
The company says the money will go towards speeding up development of its deep-strike missiles, expanding its test programme and growing its operations across Europe. It also plans to create hundreds of engineering and manufacturing jobs in the UK and Germany. It has not given a headcount target or said how the jobs will be split between the two countries.
What it means
The raise adds to a run of large defence rounds in Europe this year, as governments put money into sovereign strike and air-defence programmes. The UK subsidiary matters for the British side of Trinity House, and the company's promise of UK manufacturing jobs puts it in line for domestic procurement.
The size of the jump from Series A to Series B in under nine months shows how quickly investors are now pricing defence hardware companies that have a government programme behind them. Hypersonica's next milestones are test results and contracts. Both will set whether the 2029 delivery date holds and what any Series C looks like.
Co-founders Dr Philipp Kerth, chief executive, and Dr Marc Ewenz, chief technology officer, said governments had accepted that Europe needed hypersonic deep-strike capability and that the issue was now delivery.
Original source: Tech.eu — https://tech.eu/2026/11/02/british-german-defence-startup-hypersonica-raises-eur100m/
