Quantum Systems has closed a €180 million Series C extension led by Balderton Capital, taking its total 2025 funding to €340 million and pushing the company’s valuation above €3 billion. That figure makes it the largest private capital raise in Europe’s dual-use technology sector so far, and confirms Quantum Systems as Europe’s first dual-use “unicorn” in uncrewed defence systems.
The new money sits on top of the €160 million Series C round the company announced in May. Together, the two deals give Quantum Systems millions of growth capital at a time when European governments are stepping up spending on autonomous systems, sensors, and software that can move quickly from front line use to border security, critical infrastructure, and civil missions.
Quantum Systems grew out of a small engineering team around former Bundeswehr helicopter pilot and aerospace researcher Florian Seibel at the University of the German Armed Forces in Munich. The core group patented a vertically launchable fixed wing unmanned aircraft, then incorporated Quantum-Systems GmbH in January 2015 in Gilching, near Munich, with Seibel joined by colleagues Armin Busse, Tobias Kloss, and Michael Kriegel. The company started in civilian markets, building electric VTOL fixed wing drones for mapping, agriculture, and surveying, combining long range flight with vertical take off and landing. Over the past decade that platform work has been pulled into defence and security.
The company plans to expand its work across air, land, and maritime domains, tying platforms together with its MOSAIC UXS mission software. It will invest in AI, software, and hardware for intelligent unmanned systems and continue a buy and build plan that already brought AirRobot, Nordic Unmanned, and Spleenlab into the group earlier this year.
The company’s systems are already in service with NATO forces in Europe and the United States, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, and Ukraine, where Quantum’s aircraft have been operating since the full scale invasion began in 2022. Headcount is set to reach about 1,000 people by the end of the year across Germany, Ukraine, the US, Australia, Romania, the UK, and the Baltic states, backed by plans to scale mass production in Germany and other European sites.
For investors, the round is also a bet on “European sovereignty” in defence and dual-use technology.
“We are partnering with Quantum Systems to help them continue to fulfill the promise of European sovereignty in defence and dual-use technology,” said Rana Yarad, a Balderton partner. “As geopolitical instability rises and security priorities shift, the need for home-grown, trusted European innovation has never been greater.”
There are a few important points in this massive raise, the first being that it is a massive raise. €340 million in a single year for one drone and autonomy company shows that late stage capital is now willing to treat European dual-use as a scale sector, not just a collection of early stage bets. Second, the round ties money directly to industrial capacity in Europe which is increasingly vital as the U.S. steps back. In all, this is a wild raise for one of Europe’s biggest defence unicorns.
