A British startup building systems to shoot down drones and cruise missiles is in talks to raise $300M at a $3.5bn valuation.
Cambridge Aerospace is negotiating a round that would be led by venture firm DFJ Growth, according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter. The $3.5bn figure represents a near-ninefold increase from the company's valuation roughly a year ago. No terms have been finalized and the deal could still change.
The jump tells you something about where defence-tech investment has gone since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine forced NATO governments to rethink procurement. Counter-drone technology specifically moved from niche to urgent: battlefield footage from Ukraine showed that cheap commercial drones can neutralize expensive conventional hardware, and militaries across Europe are now paying to fix that gap. A VC firm leading a round of this size into hard-defence would have been unusual five years ago; it is fast becoming routine.
Whether a $3.5bn price tag is justified is harder to audit than a SaaS ARR number — defence contracts are often classified, customer counts stay secret, and revenue visibility is limited. Investors appear to be pricing in a geopolitical tailwind, not a spreadsheet.