Cambridge-based air defence company Cambridge Aerospace has closed a $300 million Series C funding round, valuing the business at $3.4 billion — a signal to the wider UK defence supply chain that private investors are backing British-built military technology at real scale.
The round was led by US venture capital firm DFJ Growth, with continued backing from earlier investors including Lux, Accel, Lakestar, Never Lift, Ora Global and Elad Gil & Co. It follows a $200 million Series B round in April, which valued the company at $1.3 billion, meaning its valuation has more than doubled in the space of a few months.
The new funding will go towards scaling up manufacturing to meet a growing pipeline of Ministry of Defence work. Since its Series B round, the company has picked up several MOD contracts, including a deal to supply low-cost interceptor missiles to UK Armed Forces, first announced by the Defence Secretary at the London Defence Conference. That win came alongside the MOD’s launch of its wider Low-Cost Effectors & Autonomous Platforms (LEAP) programme in July.
That expansion matters well beyond one company. As Cambridge Aerospace scales up production of its Skyhammer interceptor system, and prepares to bring a second product, Starhammer, to market in 2027, it will need to lean more heavily on UK manufacturers, component suppliers and specialist engineering firms to keep pace with demand. Growth of this kind at a fast-scaling defence company tends to ripple outward, creating openings for SMEs able to support production, testing, and logistics.
It also offers a useful case study in the ambitions behind the government’s £298bn Defence Investment Plan, which aims to turn higher defence spending into new programmes, procurement activity and supply chain opportunities across the UK. Programmes such as LEAP sit within that wider pipeline, and companies like Cambridge Aerospace, which is hiring at pace and already has operations in Germany, Poland, Norway, Ukraine and Australia alongside the UK, are the kind of supplier growth story the Plan is designed to encourage.
Defence Secretary Wes Streeting welcomed the funding round, calling it “a great vote of confidence in Britain” and linking it to the government’s so-called unicorn scheme, which aims to help promising start-ups scale into billion-pound businesses. “It is exactly what our unicorn scheme is designed to create,” he said, “British start-ups scaling into billion-pound companies, creating skilled jobs, cementing the UK’s position at the forefront of defence innovation.”
Post written by: Alastair Roberts
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