Berlin's Stark Defence, founded in 2024, is in talks to raise about €300 million at a roughly €2.5 billion valuation, more than double its prior €1 billion mark1. The company has not demonstrated production at the volumes military procurement requires, so investors are paying twice the price for an unchanged delivery record. Peter Thiel is confirmed as an investor, and the flagship Virtus autonomous loitering munition, a drone that loiters over a target area before striking, remains Stark's only product while the round stays open.
Stark already holds a slice of the Bundeswehr's €840 million framework alongside Helsing and Rheinmetall, and that existing government contract is the backdrop against which the valuation doubled on no disclosed output. The gap to Helsing's $18 billion mark is the proven-in-field premium: Helsing's HX-2 has combat credentials, while Stark's Virtus has a valuation and a backer.
The round prices an option on conversion, and the prototype-to-production gap is the risk the capital is underwriting. The same delivery-versus-valuation tension runs through this whole briefing: a funded Anduril books a loss against its CCA win, Skydio prices mass below the cost of a single exquisite ISR platform, and a Berlin prototype house is marked at billions before building at scale. In each case the capital buys the option to produce rather than production itself. The raise is in discussions, not signed, and Thiel's participation is reported via the Financial Times rather than confirmed by a closed round.
