Well, gosh darn. So much for Europe being conservative when it comes to funding defense.
This morning, British-slash-German hypersonic deep-strike company Hypersonica announced that it’s closed a €100M Series B to “accelerate development of its deep-strike systems, increase testing cadence and expand operations and reindustrialisation across Europe.”
- The round was co-led by Lightspeed and General Catalyst, with participation from existing investors including Plural, 201 Ventures and Germany’s Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation (SPRIND).
“The debate about whether Europe needs hypersonic deep-strike capability is over,” Co-founders Philipp Kerth (CEO) and Marc Ewenz (CTO) said in a joint statement. “Governments have recognised the requirement and begun funding programmes. The challenge now is delivery. Europe needs credible hypersonic long-range capability, and more value for every pound and euro it spends.”
“We have shown that next-generation hypersonic systems can be developed in Europe faster and more affordably than conventional wisdom suggests,” they added. “[This] Series B marks our transition from demonstration to delivery.”
Kaboom: Now, Hypersonica is one of those “walk quietly and carry a big stick” type companies in Europe (except, in this case, the stick is actually just a missile).
- The company was founded in Germany in 2023 around a pretty ambitious goal: building a sovereign, European hypersonic deep-strike capability by 2029. The idea is to break free of American weapons systems and parts, because, well, you know.
- Like a lot of new-age missile companies, they’re redesigning these systems from the ground up to be modular, easy to iterate, and designed for manufacturing. The goal is cheaper missiles that can be built in Europe a heck of a lot faster, with far fewer bottlenecks—Hypersonica says its manufacturing process “reduces costs by more than 80% compared to conventional approaches.”
- The company’s first publicly announced missile is the HS-1, its hypersonic test vehicle. Back in February, HS-1 topped Mach 6 and demonstrated a 300 km range in a flight test in Norway. (You’ve probably seen the photos.)
- That first test vehicle actually used a rocket motor built by Canadian firm Magellan Aerospace, but the company plans to design and build its own SRM for the final thing.
Fit the bill: And Hypersonica isn’t just building these missiles for shits and gigs—the UK and Germany launched their official Deep Precision Strike initiative under the Trinity Agreement (for defense cooperation) back in 2024. And Hypersonica’s missiles are well on their way to fitting the bill.
- In 2025, the two countries officially agreed to jointly develop a weapon with a range of 2,000+ km.
- Then, earlier this year, the UK MoD said that it would actually be a family of systems—stealth cruise missiles (that don’t need to travel at hypersonic speeds) plus hypersonic missiles, all with multiple launch options across land, air, and sea.
- This summer, the UK officially committed £770M ($1.03B) over four years to the joint program, and has said it will spend £3B on deep strike more broadly by 2030.
- The German commitments have not been disclosed, but twelve European allies (including Germany) committed $50B to sovereign deep strike development over the next decade this summer.
In other words, the program and the budget are (at least in theory) there. Now it’s about, like, actually building the damn thing.
Reindustrialize, baby: With this funding, Hypersonica says it will supercharge development of its missiles and speed up testing cadence.
- Apparently, they’ve massively expanded their engineering team since that flight test in February—this money means they can do more of that. The company says it will add “hundreds of highly skilled engineering and manufacturing jobs across the UK and Germany.”
“This funding will accelerate development, increase testing cadence, support European reindustrialisation and help ensure Europe has access to sovereign capability developed and produced in Europe,” Kerth and Ewenz said.
