Cambridge Aerospace Closes a USD 300 Million Series C at USD 3.4 Billion
Cambridge, 10 August 2026
Key points
- Cambridge Aerospace closed a USD 300 million Series C on 10 August led by DFJ Growth, with Lux, Accel, Lakestar, Never Lift, Ora Global and Elad Gil and Co participating
- The valuation is USD 3.4 billion, against USD 1.3 billion at the USD 200 million Series B in April 2026; total funding reaches USD 630 million for a company founded in September 2024
- Skyhammer is a radar-guided interceptor with a range beyond 30 kilometres, high-subsonic at about Mach 0.7, at a unit cost in the tens of thousands of dollars — which the company puts at 1 to 2 per cent of a conventional interceptor
- Output is currently in the low hundreds a month against a stated target of several thousand; Starhammer, the rocket-powered variant for faster and ballistic targets, is due to market in 2027
- The company is building its own solid-rocket-motor plant in Norfolk for the Nightstar motors that power both products; it holds UK Ministry of Defence contracts, took Britain's national award under the five-nation LEAP effort in July, and operates in the UK, Germany, Poland, Norway, Ukraine and Australia
Cambridge Aerospace closed a USD 300 million Series C at a USD 3.4 billion valuation on 10 August, taking total funding to USD 630 million less than two years after the company was founded.
DFJ Growth led the round, with Lux, Accel, Lakestar, Never Lift, Ora Global and Elad Gil and Co alongside. The pace is the first fact: the company was founded in September 2024, raised a USD 200 million Series B at a USD 1.3 billion valuation in April, and has more than doubled that valuation in four months. It employs over 250 people, two-thirds of them technical, and chief executive Steven Barrett is an aerospace engineer; chief commercial officer Chris Sylvan is a former Royal Marines officer.
The product that carries the valuation is Skyhammer, a radar-guided interceptor for drones and cruise missiles with a range beyond 30 kilometres and a cruise speed around Mach 0.7. Its stated cost is in the tens of thousands of dollars, which the company frames as 1 to 2 per cent of what a conventional interceptor costs — the arithmetic that makes repeated engagement of cheap targets affordable. It is under Ministry of Defence contract and already fielded, it has been tested by the US Army in Europe, and it took the British national award under LEAP, the five-nation low-cost-effector effort with Poland, France, Italy and Germany, in July. Starhammer, rocket-powered and aimed at faster and ballistic threats, is due to market in 2027.
The valuation is priced on a ramp, not on a product. Output today is in the low hundreds a month against a target of several thousand, and the distance between those two numbers is manufacturing rather than engineering. The part of it the company cannot buy is the solid rocket motor: motors and energetics are the named European bottleneck behind the Ministry of Defence's programme of 22 feasibility studies toward at least six new explosives and propellant plants, and behind Rheinmetall's new propellant line at Aschau am Inn — state and prime responses running on multi-year timelines. Building Nightstar in Norfolk is a wager that none of them will relieve the constraint in time to sell Cambridge Aerospace capacity. Großwald recorded the round in Signal No. 120. What would settle the wager is a delivered motor, not a delivered interceptor.
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