Hypersonica has raised €100 million in Series B funding to build hypersonic missiles for Europe. The round was co-led by Lightspeed and General Catalyst, both American firms, with existing backers Plural and 201 Ventures joining. It takes the total raised to roughly €126 million by a company founded in December 2023, based near Munich with a subsidiary in London.

Its founders, Dr Philipp Kerth and Dr Marc Ewenz, are both German and met while doing hypersonics PhDs at Oxford.

The €126 million follows a €2.5 million seed and a €23.2 million Series A led by Plural in February 2026. That earlier round also drew in SPRIND, Germany's federal breakthrough innovation agency. The Financial Times reported a valuation of about €700 million, citing people familiar with the deal. The company has not confirmed that figure.

What Hypersonica has actually flown

The company's prototype, HS-1, flew from Andøya Space in Norway and was logged in the international register of hypersonic test launches. Hypersonica says it passed Mach 6, which is roughly 7,400 km/h, and covered more than 300 km.

It also says the vehicle went from concept to flight-ready in nine months, and that its development approach costs about 80% less than the conventional route. Both figures come from the company, not an independent test authority.

The prototype was unarmoured. There is no named customer yet, no demonstrated manoeuvring flight, and no public price per missile. Hypersonica is aiming to field operational deep-strike systems by 2029.

That gap between a successful test flight and a weapon a defence ministry will buy is where most of this money will go.

Why two US funds are backing a European sovereign weapon

There is an obvious tension in this round. Hypersonica exists to give Europe strike capability it does not have to buy from the United States, and the money to build it has come from Lightspeed and General Catalyst, both American.

That is not unusual any more. Dealroom figures show US investors account for 47% of European defence tech funding, in a sector heading for a record $10.5 billion this year, with Munich taking around 40% of it.

Both firms have form here. Lightspeed led the Series A at Castelion, the US hypersonics company, and backs Helsing. General Catalyst led Helsing's Series B and Series C.

Alexander Schmitt, a partner at Lightspeed, said Hypersonica is "redefining how advanced defence capability gets built".

For founders raising in this sector, the practical read is that European sovereignty is the product, not the cap table. Investors are not treating American capital as a contradiction, and neither, so far, are European governments. Whether that holds when procurement contracts are signed is a different question.

What it means for UK engineers and founders

The London subsidiary is the part UK readers should watch. Hypersonica says the funding will create hundreds of engineering and manufacturing jobs across the UK and Germany.

There is government money sitting behind that. Under the Trinity House Agreement, the UK's Defence Investment Plan is reported to commit £770 million over four years to a joint UK and German programme covering stealth cruise and hypersonic weapons with ranges beyond 2,000 km, for delivery in the 2030s.

A startup that is three years old and has flown one unarmoured prototype is now positioned against that programme. For UK deeptech founders, that is the lesson worth taking: in defence, a credible flight test plus a bilateral treaty can move you further than a decade of revenue.

It also tells you where senior hardware engineers are about to get expensive. Hypersonica will be competing for propulsion, materials and guidance people against a UK market that is already short of them, and paying venture money to do it.

Our UK startup funding data shows how heavily this market concentrates, and Bizztor's breakdown of which cities and sectors take the most funding puts 78% of UK money in London. Defence is one of the few categories where it genuinely leaves the capital.

The co-founders put their position bluntly: "The debate about whether Europe needs hypersonic deep-strike capability is over."

The debate about whether a 2023 startup can deliver it by 2029 has not started yet.

Bizztor has also reported on Augur's backing from the UK Sovereign AI Fund and on Fractile's £577.4m Series C for AI inference chips, two other cases of UK deeptech raising at a scale that was rare two years ago.