TL;DRBerlin drone maker Stark is raising €300M at €2.5B, doubling its valuation in months. It was founded in 2024 and builds kamikaze drones.
Stark, a Berlin-based strike drone startup founded in 2024, is in discussions to raise at least €300 million at a valuation of approximately €2.5 billion, the Financial Times reported. If completed, the deal would more than double the company’s valuation from earlier this year, when it crossed the €1 billion mark. The company is 18 months old.
Stark was co-founded by Florian Seibel, who previously founded rival German drone maker Quantum Systems, and Johannes Schaback. The company builds autonomous strike systems, particularly loitering munitions, the military term for drones designed to hover over a target area, identify threats, and destroy them by self-destructing on impact.
Its flagship product, Virtus, autonomously identifies and strikes targets before detonating. The category is often called kamikaze drones. The systems reflect a broader shift in warfare toward low-cost autonomous weapons that can be produced and deployed at scale.
The pace of valuation growth is extraordinary even by defence-tech standards. Stark reportedly crossed the unicorn threshold earlier in 2026. A €2.5 billion valuation just months later would make it one of the fastest-growing defence startups in European history.
