Valkyrie Dynamics raises €1M to make cheap drones hit targets in bad weather
What's the deal? Valkyrie DynamicsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Ukrainian-Lithuanian defence hardware startup, has raised €1 million ($1.1 million) in a pre-seed round led by Paris-based venture studio Hexa, with defence tech angel investors participating. It builds miniature radar seekers that turn low-cost drones into precision interceptors.
What's the endgame? The company's product, Heimdall, is an onboard radar seeker that sits in an interceptor's nose cone and gives operators a radar view in the final 100 to 500 metres of a strike. Most low-cost interceptors rely on optical and thermal cameras, which fail in rain, fog, smoke and snow; Heimdall's radio-frequency waves penetrate those conditions. At roughly 100 grams and a target price below €300 per unit at volume, it undercuts expensive ground radars.
Why now? Russia is replacing propeller-driven Shahed drones with faster, jet-powered variants that typical interceptors can no longer catch. The round also lands ahead of what the team calls "Shahed season," October through March, when attacks on Ukrainian cities are expected to intensify under longer nights and heavier cloud cover.
The founder's path: Chief executive officer Marcin Kovalevskij, an engineering physicist who previously worked at CNRS and Exotrail, developed the Heimdall concept on weekends before packing his equipment into two suitcases and moving to Kyiv to set up an R&D lab. For the first five months, he slept on the floor of a factory that had previously taken missile hits.
Kovalevskij said the mission is to "make mass-scale air defence more affordable and expendable," replacing "$3 million missiles with low-cost drone interceptors guided by more accessible radar technology." Valkyrie reached a working prototype by October 2026 and joined Hexa Sprint Defense, an accelerator for early-stage European defence and dual-use startups. It plans to bring the same radar technology to ground vehicles and other unmanned platforms.
What could go wrong? The raise is small beside larger European defence-tech rounds, and battlefield performance and production volumes remain untested at scale. Heimdall also depends on a partner's guidance module for autonomous flight, with the final decision to engage still sitting with a human pilot.
The signal: The round backs a specific component — weather-resistant radar — rather than a whole system, reflecting a broader shift toward low-cost, mass-produced counter-drone technology. Ukrainian startup Molfar raised €2 million in June for related radar work, and Ukraine's Brave1 program has expanded defence grants. The bet is less about size than about whether cheap interceptors can be made to work in poor visibility.
Read more: Tech.eu
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
