EUACCDaily Pulse #12 · 23 Jun 2026
A Berlin drone startup founded two years ago closed a €500 million round at a €3.5 billion valuation, led by Sequoia and Founders Fund, making it one of the most valuable defence-tech companies Europe has produced.
🎯DEFENCE TECH
Stark reaches €3.5bn on Europe's largest defence-tech raise
On 23 June, Stark Defence, a Berlin maker of loitering munitions founded in 2024, closed a €500 million funding round at a valuation above €3.5 billion, making it one of Europe's most valuable defence-tech companies after just two years. The round was led by Sequoia Capital and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, with the NATO Innovation Fund, Project A, Air Street Capital, 201 Ventures, and Döpfner Capital also investing. Total capital raised now exceeds €660 million.
Stark's flagship Virtus kamikaze drone is already under sovereign contract: in February 2026, the Bundeswehr awarded Stark an initial €269 million agreement, with a framework potentially worth €1 billion, to supply loitering munitions to Germany's 45th Armoured Brigade in Lithuania. The company operates production facilities in Germany, Ukraine, Sweden, Greece and Swindon, England. More than 80 percent of the new capital goes to manufacturing scale and R&D, including new electronic warfare research facilities targeting production of thousands of systems per month.
💡WHY IT MATTERS
Two years, a sovereign contract, and a US-led €3.5bn valuation
Stark went from founding to a €3.5 billion valuation in two years on the back of a real sovereign customer and hardware shipping into active military use. That trajectory previously existed only in US defence corridors.
The tell is the cap table: Sequoia and Founders Fund lead, with the NATO Innovation Fund as institutional anchor. The largest European defence-tech raise in memory still carries American growth investors at the top. The pattern is the one the continent keeps rediscovering: the cheque large enough to matter now lands in Europe, but the lead still originates in the US.
For a defence or dual-use founder, the actionable template is now visible. Stark assembled a sovereign Bundeswehr contract, US growth capital, and NATO institutional backing into a stack that works at the €500 million scale. Build toward the sovereign customer first; the cap table follows.
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