Hypersonica closes a €100 million Series B for sovereign European hypersonic missiles, backed by Lightspeed and General Catalyst, as US tier-1 venture capital enters the EU bilateral defence stack.
HYPERSONICA SERIES B
€100 million to build Europe's sovereign hypersonic strike capability
Hypersonica, a British-German defence startup based in Wessling near Munich, closed a €100 million Series B on 2 November. Lightspeed Venture Partners and General Catalyst co-led the round; existing investors Plural and 201 Ventures also participated. Total capital raised stands at approximately €126 million, including a €23.3 million Series A from February 2026. The *Financial Times* reported a valuation of around €700 million.
The company builds hypersonic deep-strike missiles that travel above Mach 5 -- fast enough to evade current interceptor systems. CEO Philipp Kerth and CTO Marc Ewenz both hold Oxford doctorates. Hypersonica claims its development approach cuts costs by more than 80 percent against traditional defence procurement. A first test flight was conducted at Andoya Space in northern Norway in February. The funding will go to additional test flights, engineering expansion in the UK and Germany, and business development across Europe.
WHY IT MATTERS
US VCs enter European sovereign defence; the Trinity House programme is the model
Hypersonica sits inside the UK-German Deep Precision Strike programme, a commitment under the Trinity House Agreement. The UK has allocated £770 million over four years to that programme -- government budget already committed, with Hypersonica as the commercial vehicle designed to absorb it.
The Lightspeed and General Catalyst co-lead signals a structural shift. US tier-1 venture funds have concentrated European defence exposure in software, intelligence, and logistics. Backing a hypersonic programme inside a bilateral government contract marks a new step, driven by NATO capability gaps and the procurement moat that embedded suppliers in government programmes hold.
Target: 2029 deployment. For founders in dual-use hardware, propulsion, precision guidance, or test infrastructure, this round shows that institutional capital now covers the full European defence stack -- not just the software layer on top of it.
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