Berlin Drone-Maker STARK Raises €500m at a €3.5bn-Plus Valuation in a Sequoia and Founders Fund Round

Berlin, 23 June 2026

Key points

• STARK, the Berlin loitering-munition start-up founded in 2024, raised €500 million on 23 June 2026 in a Series C co-led by Sequoia Capital and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, with the NATO Innovation Fund and Döpfner Capital among the backers
• The round roughly triples STARK's valuation to more than €3.5 billion (reported around $3.65 billion) and lifts total funding since founding to about €640 million, more than 80 percent of it bound for research and production
• STARK holds a roughly €269 million Bundeswehr contract won in February 2026 alongside Helsing — out of a €540 million package — supplying its Virtus loitering munition, which ranges beyond 130 kilometres, to the German brigade in Lithuania
• Now led by chief executive Uwe Horstmann, with founder Florian Seibel stepped back to founding investor, STARK says it is scaling toward “thousands of systems per month”

STARK, the Berlin loitering-munition start-up founded in 2024, raised €500 million on 23 June 2026 in a round co-led by Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund, roughly tripling its valuation to more than €3.5 billion.

The Series C round, announced on the evening of 23 June, was co-led by Sequoia Capital and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, with the NATO Innovation Fund, Döpfner Capital, Project A and others alongside. It values STARK at more than €3.5 billion — reported at around $3.65 billion — roughly three times its previous mark, and brings total funding since the company's 2024 founding to about €640 million. More than 80 percent of the money is earmarked for research and manufacturing as the firm scales toward what it calls “thousands of systems per month.” Chief executive Uwe Horstmann said Europe's challenge “is no longer whether we can innovate, it's whether we can scale.”

STARK's core product is the Virtus loitering munition, a strike drone ranging beyond 130 kilometres with up to 90 minutes of flight. In February 2026 the company won a roughly €269 million Bundeswehr contract — awarded alongside Helsing out of a €540 million medium-range loitering-munition package — to equip the German armoured brigade stationing in Lithuania. Founder Florian Seibel, who also founded the reconnaissance-drone maker Quantum Systems, has stepped back to a founding-investor role; Horstmann, a Project A co-founder, took over as chief executive in October 2025.

The proprietary read. This is the private-capital half of European rearmament, running in parallel to the state-equity route Berlin is taking into the primes. Venture money now floods drone production — STARK at €3.5 billion, Helsing reportedly raising near $18 billion — while two-year-old firms win nine-figure defence contracts on the strength of a single product. The wager is the one the Bundeswehr made in February: that loitering munitions built at software-company speed and volume matter more than legacy missile pedigree. The risk mirrors the promise — a field this hot will consolidate, and not every €3.5 billion valuation survives the cull. As Signal No. 88 noted, the capital is betting STARK is a consolidator, not a casualty.

Related · German loitering-munition primes

Bundestag clears €540m for Helsing HX-2 and Stark Virtus loitering munitions (February 2026) Helsing and Eurenco partner on a sovereign European warhead for the HX-2 (17 June 2026)

Sources: STARK · Handelsblatt · Sequoia Capital · Bundeswehr.

First reported in Signal No. 88, 23 June 2026.