Hypersonica Raises €100M to Push European Hypersonic Missiles Toward 2029
German-British venture Hypersonica has raised €100 million in a Series B funding round aimed at developing long-range hypersonic strike systems for Europe. The round was led by US investment firms Lightspeed and General Catalyst, with existing backers Plural and 201 Ventures also participating.
The raise builds on an earlier €23.3 million round the company closed in February 2026, led by Plural with participation from Germany’s Sprind innovation agency, General Catalyst and 201 Ventures.
Hypersonica says the new capital will expand its research and development work, increase the frequency of flight testing, and grow manufacturing capacity in both Germany and the United Kingdom. The company also plans to create hundreds of skilled jobs in engineering, technology development and production.
The firm’s stated goal is to field long-range hypersonic attack systems — and the European industrial base needed to build them — by 2029. Hypersonica says it owns and controls its own technology stack, positioning its systems as free of US ITAR export restrictions that constrain many European defence programmes reliant on American components.
The company’s HS-1 demonstrator carried out its first flight test in February 2026 at Andøya Space in Norway. According to data Hypersonica has released, the vehicle exceeded Mach 6 and covered more than 300 kilometres during that test.
Hypersonica’s longer-term targets include speeds above Mach 5, enhanced manoeuvrability and the ability to penetrate existing air and missile defence systems. The company also claims its modular design could eventually cut production costs by as much as 80 percent — a figure that remains the company’s own projection for a system that has not yet reached mass production.
Hypersonica has not announced any supply contracts and has not named a customer. Its work sits within the broader UK-Germany Deep Precision Strike cooperation underpinned by the Trinity House defence agreement.
The UK’s Defence Investment Plan allocates roughly £770 million (about €900 million) over four years to this area, and the company points to a separate NATO-backed multinational initiative with roughly £37 billion (about €43 billion) earmarked for deep precision strike investment over the coming decade — figures that represent alliance- and country-level investment pools rather than contracts awarded directly to Hypersonica.
Europe’s push into hypersonic weapons has accelerated in recent years through both state-backed consortia and private ventures, driven by assessments that the continent trails the United States, Russia and China in the field. Hypersonica’s approach — rapid prototyping outside the traditional prime-contractor model — represents one strand of that broader effort, and the company is expected to remain in focus as further flight tests and potential government contracts materialise.
The involvement of major US-based funds such as Lightspeed and General Catalyst in a European defence-technology venture at this scale is itself notable, signalling that defence technology is increasingly attracting private venture capital alongside state budgets.
Sources
Infodefensa, “La empresa germano-británica Hypersonica capta 100 millones de euros para lograr el desarrollo de misiles hipersónicos europeos antes de 2029,” 3 November 2026, https://www.infodefensa.com/texto-diario/mostrar/6074497/empresa-germano-britanica-hypersonica-capta-100-millones-euros-lograr-desarrollo-misiles-hipersonicos-europeos-antes-2029 — primary source for funding figures and investor details.
