Destinus seeks €200M pre-IPO raise at €5B+ valuation
What's the deal? DestinusDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the Netherlands-headquartered defence startup that makes cruise missiles and autonomous drones, is in talks to raise roughly €200 million ($234 million) ahead of a planned Amsterdam IPO. The company is targeting a valuation north of €5 billion, based on forecast annual revenue of about €500 million.
Rothschild & Co.Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and UniCredit are advising on the round. Destinus has raised nearly €400 million to date, including convertible notes at a valuation above €1 billion in early 2026.
Why now? European defence spending is surging, and capital is flooding into the sector — global defence tech venture investment hit a record $49.1 billion in 2025. In the US, AndurilDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → raised $5 billion at a $61 billion valuation in May 2026. In Europe, Helsing is seeking $1.2 billion at an $18 billion valuation, and Quantum Systems became Germany's first defence tech unicorn in 2025.
Destinus has also reached a pivotal operational moment. In April 2026, it formed a joint venture with RheinmetallDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — Germany's largest defence contractor — called Rheinmetall Destinus Strike Systems. Rheinmetall holds 51%, Destinus 49%. The venture will manufacture and deliver cruise missiles and ballistic rocket artillery, with operations set to begin in the second half of 2026.
The company is simultaneously developing the Ruta Block 3 cruise missile, with a 2,000km range, a 250kg warhead, and autonomous navigation. Flight testing is scheduled for 2027. The earlier Ruta Block 1 is already in serial production and deployed by Ukrainian forces.
What could go wrong? Founder Mikhail KokorichDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → carries baggage. In 2024, he settled a US Securities and Exchange CommissionDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → fraud suit related to his prior company, Momentus Inc., paying a $2 million penalty and accepting a five-year ban from serving as an officer of a US-listed company. That history could complicate investor confidence ahead of an IPO.
The company also faces execution risk. Scaling from startup to a manufacturer producing over 2,000 cruise missile systems annually — across facilities in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and Ukraine — demands the kind of industrial capacity that few young companies have sustained.
The signal: Destinus represents a broader shift in European defence. The continent is racing to build its own industrial base for advanced weapons, driven by the war in Ukraine and uncertainty over US commitment to NATO. The Rheinmetall partnership is a template: pairing startup speed and design with legacy industrial muscle.
Founded in 2021 by Kokorich, a Russian-born physicist who renounced his citizenship over the war, and co-founded by Oleksandr DanyliukDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Ukraine's former finance minister, Destinus embodies the geopolitical forces reshaping European tech. If it reaches a public listing, it would become one of Europe's most valuable defence tech companies — and a signal that the continent's startup ecosystem can produce weapons manufacturers, not just software firms.
