Hermeus raises $350M to build unmanned hypersonic fighters, valuation hits $1B

Big round, mixed paper

It has been reported that Los Angeles-based Hermeus has closed a $350 million financing package that values the startup at $1 billion. The company said $200 million came in equity led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Canaan Partners, Founders Fund, In-Q-Tel, RTX Ventures, and new investors including Cox Enterprises’ venture fund and Destiny Tech100. The remaining $150 million is structured as debt — a deliberate move, CEO AJ Piplica told TechCrunch, to finance heavy hardware spending without further diluting the cap table.

Engine pivot and fast prototyping

Hermeus didn’t get here by accident. The startup reportedly shifted course away from a wholly bespoke engine after courting RTX Ventures and instead partnered to modify Pratt & Whitney’s F100. That trade-off bought speed: a proven engine allowed quicker test cycles, faster iterations, and easier alignment with Department of Defense demand. The company recently flew a demonstrator the size of an F‑16 and says the next build will push into supersonic territory; a third airframe is already in development. “This accelerates us to Mach 5,” president Zach Shore said, noting the move also shored up the business case.

Talent is the bottleneck

Hermeus sounds part aerospace shop, part Silicon Valley skunkworks. Piplica leans into a SpaceX-style playbook: build, test, fail, learn, repeat. That’s exhilarating. It’s also the rub. “There’s nowhere in the world where companies are building new full-scale aircraft on an annual basis… People used to do that, but they’re all dead,” he said — a grim, oddly human moment in this high-speed tale. Hermeus now employs nearly 300 people and says the new funding will widen that bench.

Market tailwinds and the question ahead

The raise lands amid a flood of capital into defense tech — VC investment topped roughly $9 billion last year, per PitchBook — so investors are clearly hungry for bets on next‑gen military platforms. Hermeus has cash, a faster engine route, and demonstrators in the air. But can a startup scale the people, manufacturing and safety processes needed for frontline hypersonic systems? That’s the real race — not just to Mach 5, but to reliability, supply chains and the talent to keep building at speed.

Sources: techcrunch.com