The Munich-area start-up, barely three years old, has closed a €100m Series B co-led by US investors Lightspeed and General Catalyst, four times its last round. It is betting that London and Berlin will buy a sovereign deep-strike weapon by 2029. Its prototype has yet to fly with a guidance system.

Hypersonica, a British-German defence start-up based in Feldkirchen near Munich, has raised €100m to try to give Europe a hypersonic missile of its own. The round was first reported on Monday morning by Der Spiegel, which wrote that "American investors and a German minister apparently believe it can work" (translated).

In a statement published the same day, the company said the Series B was co-led by Lightspeed and General Catalyst, with existing investors Plural and 201 Ventures taking part again. That is four times the €23.3m Series A it closed in February, which Plural led with Germany's federal breakthrough-innovation agency SPRIND. Hypersonica was founded in December 2023 by two German Oxford PhDs, chief executive Philipp Kerth and chief technology officer Marc Ewenz, and was incubated at TUM Venture Labs in Munich.

A fast rocket is not yet a weapon

The company's main technical result so far is one flight. On 3 February its HS-1 "SCOOTER" test vehicle launched from Andøya Space in northern Norway, exceeded Mach 6 and travelled more than 300km. Hypersonica calls itself the first privately funded European defence company to reach that milestone.

The details matter. According to Der Spiegel, as summarised by UA.News and Dealroom, the prototype carried no guidance system. The next tests, which will focus on guidance and manoeuvrability, are not planned until 2027. The flight used a motor from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Bayern-Chemie, and Der Spiegel reports that DLR has since ended its cooperation with the start-up. No reason was given in the summaries available. Hypersonica now plans to build its own solid-propellant motor. Kerth told the magazine that large rocket boosters are a critically scarce component for NATO.

Speed alone is not the hard part: ballistic missiles have flown faster than Mach 5 for decades. What makes a hypersonic weapon hard to stop is the ability to manoeuvre at those speeds, and that is the capability Hypersonica has not yet shown. The company also says its development model cuts costs by "more than 80%" compared with conventional approaches. It has published no independent evidence for that figure.

Why the money is flowing now

The timing follows government budgets. Hypersonica points to the UK's Defence Investment Plan, which sets aside an initial £770m over four years for the UK-German Deep Precision Strike programme under the 2024 Trinity House Agreement. It also cites a NATO-led initiative announced in July that envisages £37bn of deep-strike investment over the next decade. Der Spiegel names Germany and the UK as possible first customers and reports that German defence minister Boris Pistorius visited the company at the end of October.

"The debate about whether Europe needs hypersonic deep-strike capability is over," Kerth and Ewenz said in the statement. "The challenge now is delivery."

There is an irony in the funding. A start-up selling "sovereign, ITAR-free capability" for Europe has had its largest cheque co-led by two US venture firms. Hypersonica says it "develops, owns and controls its technology in Europe". Whether that is enough for procurement officials in Berlin and London may depend on how the shareholder structure is examined in any future contract.

For European tech, the deal is one of the largest early-stage hardware rounds in German defence. It also tests whether venture capital can carry a weapons programme through its most expensive phase: guided flight tests, a new motor and production by 2029. Among European defence start-ups, Hypersonica is now well funded. Its next step is to show that the missile can be steered.

Sources

• Der Spiegel: "Deutsches Raketen-Start-up sammelt 100 Millionen Euro ein" (German, paywalled), 2 Nov 2026
• Hypersonica: "Hypersonica raises €100M Series B to build Europe's sovereign deterrence", 2 Nov 2026
• UA.News: "Hypersonica raises €100 million to develop hypersonic missiles — Der Spiegel", 2 Nov 2026
• Dealroom News: "Hypersonica raises €100M Series B", 2 Nov 2026
• Hypersonica: €23.3m Series A announcement, 10 Feb 2026
• Andøya Space: "Successful flight of SCOOTER"

Image: computer-generated abstract illustration (European Tech On Heels), not a depiction of the actual vehicle.