What are the current funding trends in defense tech?

All funding deals in the defense tech market over the last years

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report on defense tech funding, valuations and who's ahead.

Is defense tech funding really booming right now?

Defense tech funding is clearly stronger right now: more companies are raising, more deals are getting done, and the typical round has become much larger.

We tracked 93 financings from January 1 through September 21, compared with 70 over the same period in 2025 and only 33 in 2024. The number of funded companies rose even faster, from 63 to 88 in one year.

Round sizes moved up at the same time. The median financing reached $26.5 million, versus $15 million in 2025 and $10.45 million two years ago. That tells us more about the broad market than the headline capital figure, which jumped from $5.30 billion to $18.73 billion.

The $18.73 billion total still needs context because huge rounds now dominate the dollars. But when deal count, company count and the median are all rising together, the acceleration is hard to dismiss.

Measure	2024 YTD	2025 YTD	2026 YTD	2026 vs 2025
Deals	33	70	93	+32.9%
Unique companies	33	63	88	+39.7%
Known capital	$2.61B	$5.30B	$18.73B	+253.6%
Capital excluding >$50M rounds	$300M	$791M	$933M	+17.9%
Capital excluding >$100M rounds	$450M	$1.46B	$1.83B	+25.0%
Median round	$10.45M	$15.0M	$26.5M	+76.7%
Average round	$81.6M	$76.8M	$208.1M	+171.1%
Largest round	$1.5B	$2.5B	$5.0B	+100%
Early-stage share	66.7%	72.9%	60.2%	-12.6 pts
Later-stage share	18.2%	22.9%	32.3%	+9.4 pts

Would defense tech funding still look strong without the megarounds?

Defense tech funding would still be up without the giant deals, but the increase would look far more normal than the headline suggests.

Remove every financing above $50 million and capital rises from $791 million to $933 million, or 17.9%. Remove every round above $100 million and the increase is 25%.

Compare that with the 253.6% jump in total capital and the difference is huge. Most of the extra dollars come from the top end.

What makes 2026 unusual is how crowded that top end has become. Our dataset contains at least 26 financings of $100 million or more in the current period, compared with eight a year earlier. Anduril raised $5 billion, Shield AI $2 billion, Helsing $1.8 billion, Saronic $1.75 billion and Quantum Systems $1.2 billion.

Helsing's July 2026 Series E announcement is especially telling because the company said investor demand exceeded the available allocation. Quantum Systems described its $1.2 billion Series D as financing for industrial scale-up across autonomous air, land and sea systems.

The megarounds explain why the dollar chart looks extreme. They do not explain why 23 additional financings were completed or why the median round rose so sharply.

Are more defense tech startups actually getting funded?

Yes, more defense tech startups are getting funded today, and the increase is broader than a handful of companies raising again and again.

We counted 88 unique funded companies, up from 63 during the same period last year. Deal count rose by 23, while the number of companies rose by 25.

That difference is useful. If the boom mainly came from the same startups returning to investors several times, deal growth would have run ahead of company growth. We see the opposite.

Companies completing more than one financing during the comparable period actually fell from six to four. Meanwhile, several very different businesses entered the dataset in 2026, from autonomous weapons and counter-drone systems to tactical software, cyber warfare and even subterranean military robotics.

Traysar is a good example of how broad that pipeline has become. The company emerged publicly in June with a $25 million Seed round to build autonomous platforms for underground military operations. ASIO raised its first $15 million round for tactical navigation and situational-awareness systems. Agilis Air raised $1.4 million for lower-cost military drones and autonomy.

Those companies sit nowhere near the billion-dollar rounds, but they are part of the same increase in funded-company breadth.

Why are defense tech rounds getting so much bigger?

Defense tech rounds are getting bigger because far more money is now available for companies moving from prototypes and early deployments into production, procurement and large-scale rollout.

The median financing has climbed 76.7% in one year, while the average has shot to $208.1 million. The gap between those two numbers shows how stretched the market has become.

A Seed company may still raise single-digit millions. At the other end, companies building manufacturing capacity, autonomous fleets or major defense platforms can now raise amounts that used to look exceptional even for late-stage technology companies. Companies building factories and autonomous fleets can raise exceptional sums; we compare which business models are winning in our defense tech market report.

Aurelius Systems illustrates the transition lower down that curve. Its $40 million Series A is being used partly to expand operations, production, vertical integration and supply-chain resilience for its counter-drone system. Alta Ares raised €50 million to accelerate air-defense systems combining interceptors, data-fusion software and edge AI. Allen Control Systems raised $200 million at Series B after moving its autonomous counter-drone weapon technology further toward deployment.

Investors are increasingly financing the factory, supply chain and deployment layer alongside the underlying technology. That requires much more capital than a pure software model.

Is defense tech turning into a late-stage market?

Defense tech is moving noticeably later-stage, although early-stage funding is still very active.

Seed remains the largest single stage with 38 deals, slightly above the 35 we counted last year. What changed is everything growing around it.

Series B jumped from six transactions to 14. Series C increased from six to nine. Series D+ rose from four to seven. Together, Series B through D+ now account for 32.3% of deals, versus 22.9% a year ago.

The change becomes much sharper when we look at round size. The Series C median reached $300 million, while Series D+ reached $1.75 billion.

There are simply more mature companies in the funding mix now, and some of those companies need industrial-scale capital. Seed has not dried up. The later-stage pipeline has thickened around it.

Can new defense tech startups still get funded?

Yes, new defense tech startups can still get funded, but established companies are capturing most of the really large checks.

We identified 28 first financings this year, up from 22 over the comparable 2025 period. Their median round moved only slightly, from about $5.85 million to $6.2 million.

Follow-on financing looks very different. The number of follow-ons rose from 48 to 65, and the median increased from roughly $29 million to around $45 million.

So the early funnel is still open, while the biggest change is happening further along the company lifecycle. A startup can still raise its first round, but the financial rewards for reaching credible deployment, procurement or manufacturing milestones have become much larger.

The distinction also explains why the share of first financings slipped slightly even as their absolute number increased. New companies are entering the market; existing winners are simply scaling faster.

We treat first-financing status as directional because private-company financing histories are not always perfectly observable. Even with that limitation, the increase from 22 to 28 is large enough to show that new-company formation has not stalled.

Why is defense autonomy taking over defense tech funding?

Defense autonomy is currently the clearest growth area in defense tech funding, with more deals, much larger rounds and a growing share of the whole market.

We counted 57 autonomy financings this year, versus 34 in the comparable 2025 period. The category now represents 61.3% of all transactions and 88.6% of known capital. With autonomy taking most of the known capital, we break down where the biggest rounds are going in our defense tech funding report.

The median autonomy round also rose from $14 million to $35.7 million.

The category covers a lot more than small drones. Anduril combines autonomous platforms, weapons, sensors and command software. Helsing is expanding AI-enabled autonomous systems across several domains. Quantum Systems is scaling multi-domain autonomous platforms. Allen Control Systems is building robotic counter-drone weapons. Alta Ares is combining interceptors with AI and data fusion for air defense.

Demand outside venture capital is also becoming easier to see. Airbus signed a partnership with Alta Ares in June 2026 to work on integrated European counter-drone solutions. Anduril announced a U.S. production framework for at least 3,000 surface-launched Barracuda-500M systems, and NATO selected Anduril's Lattice technology for an air command-and-control data-platform evaluation.

That mix of venture money, industrial partnerships and procurement activity helps explain why autonomy is pulling away from the rest of the market right now.

Category	2024 deals	2025 deals	2026 deals	2026 deal share	2026 median	2026 capital share
Defense Autonomy	19	34	57	61.3%	$35.7M	88.6%
Mission Software	8	15	18	19.4%	$20.3M	4.5%
ISR Sensing	5	11	10	10.8%	$7.0M	0.6%
Defense Cyber	0	1	5	5.4%	$100M	3.0%
Space Security	0	7	3	3.2%	$6M	3.3%
Resilient Communications	1	2	0	0%	-	0%
Total market	33	70	93	100%	$26.5M	100%

Is defense cyber suddenly becoming a real funding category?

Defense cyber is starting to look like a real venture category, although five deals are still too few to call it a mature funding market.

We found one comparable cyber financing in 2025 and five this year. The median reached $100 million.

Twenty accounts for some of that jump. The offensive cyber company raised a $100 million Series B followed by an additional $30 million financing. Aslan raised $20.8 million for AI-based national-security operations in hostile online environments.

The interesting part is the move from almost no activity to several meaningful rounds within a short period. Cyber is no longer invisible inside our defense tech dataset.

For now, we would put more weight on the increase in deal count than on the $100 million median. With only five transactions, one or two large financings can move that median quickly. Another year of broader company formation would make the trend much more convincing.

Which parts of defense tech are cooling off?

ISR sensing and space security are both softer this year, but the two categories are cooling for different reasons.

ISR is the cleaner case. Deal count barely changed, from 11 to 10, while the median round fell from $20.5 million to about $7 million. Investor activity is still there, but less money is being committed per financing.

Arkeus, for example, still raised roughly $17.7 million for AI-powered hyperspectral and optical military sensing. What ISR lacks right now is the wave of nine-figure rounds appearing in autonomy.

Space Security looks more volatile. Deals fell from seven to three, but the 2024 comparable period had no qualifying transactions at all. That makes 2025 look more like an unusually busy year than a dependable baseline.

True Anomaly also raised $600 million of equity in 2026 as part of its latest financing. Capital can therefore remain substantial even with fewer space deals.

We would be more confident saying ISR funding intensity has weakened than saying investors are losing interest in defense space.

Is Europe finally becoming a serious defense tech funding market?

Europe is now a serious defense tech growth-capital market, with the clearest change showing up in round size rather than just startup count.

European companies completed 30 financings, up from 20 a year earlier. Europe's share of known capital jumped from 4.7% to 24.8%.

The money increased from roughly $247 million to about $4.64 billion. Europe's median financing also moved from around $6.4 million to $15.7 million.

Helsing and Quantum Systems are obviously a large part of that shift, but the activity goes deeper. Germany increased from five deals to eight, the United Kingdom from three to seven, and France from one to four. France's Alta Ares raised €50 million, while Germany's TYTAN Technologies raised €30 million for autonomous counter-UAS and air-defense systems.

Public financing has also moved from plans into actual disbursements. The EU's SAFE instrument provides a €150 billion loan envelope for defense investment and joint procurement. Lithuania received its first €956.3 million SAFE payment in June 2026, while Estonia received €351.6 million in August.

The European Investment Fund added another layer in March when it committed €50 million to Join Capital III, its largest defense commitment at the time, to support European deeptech and dual-use startups.

North America is still growing, so Europe's rise does not require a U.S. slowdown. We are seeing a second region producing both startup volume and very large defense growth rounds.

Geography	2025 deals	2026 deals	2025 capital share	2026 capital share	What changed
North America	35	50	88.2%	72.0%	More deals, lower share of a much larger total
Europe	20	30	4.7%	24.8%	Major jump in growth-stage capital
Middle East	6	5	4.2%	2.9%	Roughly stable activity
Asia-Pacific	9	5	3.0%	0.2%	Fewer deals and little large-round activity
Africa	0	3	0%	0.3%	Small emerging cohort
United States	-	49	-	-	Still by far the largest country by deal count
Germany	5	8	-	-	Strongest large European cohort
United Kingdom	3	7	-	-	Deal activity more than doubled
France	1	4	-	-	Small base, clear increase

Are more investors actually entering defense tech?

Yes, the defense tech investor base is getting much wider.

We identified 100 disclosed lead or co-lead investors this year, compared with 72 in 2025 and 36 in 2024. Lead-investor disclosure stayed at roughly 85%, so the increase is not coming from a sudden improvement in reporting quality.

Repeat activity is rising too. Eleven leads appear on more than one deal, versus six last year. Khosla Ventures appears six times in our 2026 comparable dataset, while Bessemer, Expeditions, Silent Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz each show up repeatedly. Khosla appearing six times shows investors doubling down; we follow which investors are making the biggest bets in our defense tech report.

The mix is broadening. Defense-focused investors now sit alongside large generalist venture firms, growth investors, institutional capital and corporate venture arms.

That becomes particularly visible in the largest rounds. Quantum Systems brought together Blackstone, Noteus, Airbus, Advent and several large crossover investors. Helsing's Series E included institutions such as Goldman Sachs Alternatives, JPMorganChase and CPP Investments alongside venture investors.

Defense tech is drawing from a much larger capital pool than the specialist venture niche it occupied a few years ago.

Why are strategic investors showing up earlier in defense tech?

Strategic investors are getting involved earlier because defense startups increasingly need industrial partners, hardware integration and access to existing defense supply chains.

We found strategic participation in 21 deals, up from 11 last year. The share of transactions involving a strategic investor rose from 15.7% to 22.6%.

Most of those deals were not late-stage. Seven were Seed, six Series A and six Series B.

AITAN's $41 million financing is a useful example. Dell Technologies Capital co-led the round while AITAN develops edge-AI robotic warfare systems. Twin Prime's $10 million pre-Seed included defense manufacturer THEON, which sits directly in the sensor and electro-optics ecosystem that Twin Prime's AI models can work with.

Alta Ares gives us another version of the same pattern. Shortly after announcing its €50 million financing, the company signed an agreement with Airbus Defence and Space to work together on European counter-drone systems.

This kind of strategic participation can give startups more than capital. Manufacturing capacity, system integration, distribution, procurement relationships and technical components can all become part of the relationship much earlier than they would in a normal software market.

Why is so much money flowing into defense tech now?

Defense tech is attracting much more capital because investors can now see larger procurement budgets, clearer capability gaps and a credible path from startup technology to industrial-scale orders.

NATO countries agreed in 2025 to work toward defense spending equal to 5% of GDP by 2035, including at least 3.5% for core defense requirements. NATO's latest figures say European Allies and Canada increased combined defense spending by nearly 20% in real terms in 2025.

The capability priorities line up unusually well with what we see in venture funding. NATO specifically highlights air and missile defense, long-range weapons, logistics and increased industrial production. Those areas overlap heavily with the categories attracting the biggest rounds today.

Europe is pushing in the same direction. The EU's Readiness Roadmap 2030 includes the European Drone Defence Initiative, European Air Shield, European Space Shield and Eastern Flank Watch. SAFE is already financing national defense investment plans and joint procurement.

Company behavior matches that environment. Quantum Systems explicitly says its latest capital is intended to support industrial scale-up. Aurelius Systems is spending on production and supply-chain resilience. Helsing is expanding autonomous AI platforms across partner nations. Anduril is tying software and autonomy to increasingly large production programs.

There is no clean way to claim that a NATO target caused a specific venture round. What investors can see today is a much larger and more durable customer base for technologies that governments have explicitly said they need.

How unusual is 2026 compared with previous defense tech funding years?

Defense tech funding in 2026 is already unusual without making any assumptions about what happens during the rest of the year.

Full-year 2025 contained 97 deals and roughly $7.15 billion of known capital. The current 2026 period has already reached 93 deals and $18.73 billion.

As seen above, 93 deals means activity has almost caught the entire previous year's transaction count before the final quarter. Capital has already reached about 2.6 times the 2025 full-year total.

The contrast with 2024 is even wider. That full year produced 45 transactions and around $2.85 billion.

We should not annualize the current figures because defense financing is too lumpy for that to be useful. Anduril, Helsing or another billion-dollar round can change a yearly total overnight.

The cleaner comparison is simply what has already happened. Deal activity is running close to an entire recent year's level, while capital has moved far beyond anything in the two previous annual datasets.

Measure	Full-year 2024	Full-year 2025	2026 YTD
Deals	45	97	93
Known capital	~$2.85B	~$7.15B	$18.73B
2026 deals as % of prior full year	206.7%	95.9%	-
2026 capital as % of prior full year	~657%	~262%	-
Largest comparable financing	$1.5B	$2.5B	$5.0B
$100M+ activity	Limited	Growing	Much broader
Main capital pattern	Highly concentrated	Large outliers emerging	Many large rounds
Market maturity	Earlier-stage heavy	Scale-up layer forming	Scale-up layer established

Is defense tech funding still dominated by a few companies?

Defense tech funding remains heavily concentrated in large companies, but one company matters much less than it used to.

The largest financing represented 57.4% of known capital in the comparable 2024 period and 47.2% in 2025. Today, even a $5 billion Anduril round accounts for only 26.7%. A $5 billion Anduril round, just over a quarter of capital, shows a wider field; we cover the top companies in our defense tech report.

The top three show the same progression: 82.8% of capital in 2024, 63.3% in 2025 and 47% now.

That does not mean funding has become evenly distributed. Quite the opposite at the upper end: rounds above $100 million account for roughly 93% of known capital.

The difference is that those dollars are now spread across a bigger group of companies. Anduril has been joined by Shield AI, Helsing, Saronic, Quantum Systems, True Anomaly and a wider set of nine-figure financings.

Capital concentration is becoming less company-specific while remaining very high by deal size. Investors have created a broader class of heavily funded defense companies.

What is actually changing in defense tech funding?

Defense tech funding is getting broader, more mature and much more capital intensive at the same time.

More startups are getting funded, which makes the current expansion broader than the headline dollar figure suggests. The number of unique companies rose almost 40% year over year, first financings increased in absolute terms and Seed activity remains healthy.

The biggest change is higher up the market. Series B through D+ financings have become much more common, follow-on rounds are larger, and the number of $100 million-plus deals has expanded dramatically. That upper layer explains most of the difference between the moderate increase in funding below $50 million and the enormous increase in headline capital.

Defense Autonomy is where the shift is most visible. The category is gaining both deals and round size, while real procurement and industrial partnerships are appearing around counter-drone systems, autonomous platforms, air defense and scalable production.

Europe is also changing the geography of the market. U.S. activity remains very strong, but European companies are now completing financing rounds that would have been rare only a couple of years ago. Public funding tools and procurement plans are becoming much more concrete at the same time.

The trend we would treat most cautiously is Defense Cyber. Five deals are enough to make the category interesting, especially after almost no comparable activity, but they are not enough to call a lasting boom yet. Space Security deserves similar caution because its year-to-year deal counts are volatile.

The clearest conclusion today is simple: defense tech has moved beyond a market where a few famous companies occasionally raise enormous rounds. There are now more funded startups underneath them, more investors willing to lead rounds, and a much thicker group of companies raising growth capital for manufacturing and deployment.