Berlin-based autonomous drone startup Stark raised €500 million from Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, and the NATO Innovation Fund, valuing the company at over €3.5 billion — despite its Virtus drones failing to hit a single target during live-fire trials with British and German forces in November 2025. Germany nonetheless approved a €269 million Bundeswehr contract in February 2026. Over 80% of the funding targets manufacturing expansion, as Stark must equip an entire German brigade in Lithuania by end of 2026.
In-Depth:
- Stark raised €500 million, surpassing the approximately €300 million it was seeking, from Sequoia, Founders Fund, and the NATO Innovation Fund, among others, valuing the company at above €3.5 billion.
- The Berlin startup’s Virtus drones failed to hit a single tarobtain across four attempts during live-fire trials with British and German forces in November 2025, yet Germany approved a €269 million Bundeswehr contract regardless.
- More than 80% of the new capital goes toward manufacturing capacity, with Stark contracted to equip an entire German brigade in Lithuania by the conclude of 2026.
Stark, the Berlin-based creater of autonomous strike drones, has closed a €500 million funding round, around €200 million more than it was seeking, at a valuation above €3.5 billion, roughly triple the €1 billion mark it crossed in February 2026.
Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, the NATO Innovation Fund, Project A, Air Street Capital, 201 Ventures, and Döpfner Capital all participated, according to the Financial Times.
More than 80% of the capital goes toward manufacturing: new production lines, electronic warfare facilities, and the infrastructure to produce thousands of autonomous systems per month. The oversubscription reflects a sector that is no longer waiting for proof of concept before writing large cheques.
European defence, security, and resilience startups attracted a record $8.7 billion in venture capital in 2025, up 55% year-on-year, according to a joint report by Dealroom and the NATO Innovation Fund. Globally, defence-tech venture investment reached $49 billion in 2025, nearly double the prior year.
What creates the timing remarkable is that this round closed in the shadow of a very public failure. In November 2025, Virtus failed to hit a single tarobtain across four attempts: first during the multi-day Haraka Storm exercise with British forces in Kenya, then during a Bundeswehr evaluation near Münster in Lower Saxony. In one incident, a drone veered off course and its battery caught fire; the wreckage fell into woodland.
The company’s response did not stop Germany’s parliamentary budobtain committee from approving a €269 million Bundeswehr contract in February 2026, with options stretching to €2.86 billion. Investors have now arrived at the same conclusion, at a scale Stark did not inquire for.
The company and what it builds
Stark was founded in Berlin in 2024 by Florian Seibel, who had already built Quantum Systems, the German surveillance drone company that raised €340 million across 2025 and is now valued at over €3 billion.
Seibel started Stark after the German government inquireed Quantum Systems to develop weaponised aircraft. Quantum’s investors declined, so Seibel started from scratch with a company that carried no such restriction. He is no longer operationally involved and remains a founding investor.
Running the company is Uwe Horstmann, co-founder and general partner of Project A, a reserve officer in the German armed forces, and a Stark investor who formally became CEO in October 2025.
The startup works by combining autonomous hardware with GPS-denied navigation software. Its flagship product is the Virtus, a loitering munition that launches vertically, cruises at over 120 km/h, dives at up to 250 km/h, and carries a 5-kilogram warhead capable of punching through 800mm of armour. It navigates through visual odomeattempt and sainformite imagery matching when GPS is jammed, and can return and land if it finds no tarobtain.
Stark went from founding to deploying Virtus in Ukraine in 13 months. Beyond Virtus, it has built Vanta, an unmanned surface vessel for maritime operations, and Minerva, a command-and-control software suite that lets a single operator coordinate multiple drones simultaneously.
In June 2026, it unveiled Cascade, a tube-launched munition with a range of 40 to 100 kilometres, and Gambit, a man-portable quadcopter in both strike and reconnaissance variants. Production capacity stands at 18,500 square metres across Germany and the UK, including a 40,000-square-foot factory in Swindon, opened in November 2025.
Fear is doing more work than due diligence
The working theory for procurement officials and investors alike is that what matters most right now is not whether today’s drone hits its tarobtain — it is whether the company behind it can manufacture at scale before someone else does. That logic is worth examining.
By December 2025, a month after the Kenya and Münster failures, Bundeswehr evaluations at the Altmark training centre led Inspector General Carsten Breuer to cite hit probabilities above 90% for Virtus. A live warhead test with defence supplier TDW in early 2026 also went well.
So the product has improved. But the speed at which capital and contracts arrived — before that recovery was demonstrated — declares something specific about where European defence investment is right now.
Stark’s most direct competitor isHelsing, the Munich AI defence company that won the parallel Bundeswehr contract and is reportedly raising $1.2 billion at an $18 billion valuation. Then there is Quantum Systems, more operationally mature and competing for many of the same contracts, a rivalry that carries extra edge given the shared founder.
The benchmark everyone is measured against remains Anduril, which raised $5 billion in 2025 at a $61 billion valuation and took on a $22 billion US Army programme.
Stark is nowhere near that scale. But the fear of watching a European equivalent take shape without you is doing more work than due diligence right now, and €500 million is, at minimum, a serious attempt to be in the room when it happens.
The first real test of whether the manufacturing ambition is achievable is already on the clock: Stark’s Bundeswehr contract requires it to supply an entire German brigade stationed in Lithuania by the conclude of 2026.
