Stark Raising €300M at €2.5B; Thiel Investment Draws Backlash

A drone startup co-founded just two years ago is raising at least €300 million at a valuation of roughly €2.5 billion, the Financial Times reported, a pace that would be notable in any sector. In European defence, it comes with a political subplot.

Stark, co-founded in Berlin in 2024 by Florian Seibel and Johannes Schaback, makes autonomous loitering munitions under the Virtus brand, designed to identify targets and self-destruct on impact. According to The Next Web, the company is backed by a framework agreement with the German Bundeswehr starting at €269 million and expandable to €2.86 billion, with the stated goal of equipping an entire brigade stationed in Lithuania by end of 2026.

The investor list has become the story within the story. Sequoia Capital led Stark's previous $62 million round, joined by Thiel Capital, the NATO Innovation Fund, In-Q-Tel, Project A, and Döpfner Capital. Peter Thiel separately invested a 'double-digit million sum' through his Founders Fund and holds a 'single-digit percentage stake,' per Trending Topics. Germany's Green party defence specialist Sebastian Schäfer publicly responded, saying he did not want to 'rely on shareholders that want to end our European democracies.' Stark's counter is that Thiel has 'no information rights relating to our products or business operations,' and that any transfer of technical details is subject to German export control regulations requiring prior approval.

The honest caveat is that Stark faced technical problems during military trials in Germany and the UK, though reporting indicates it continued securing contracts despite those setbacks. What the reporting does not clarify is whether those issues have been resolved, or whether the current €300 million raise has fully closed.

If the Bundeswehr deployment delivers and the framework contract scales toward its ceiling, Stark would be a proof point that fast-moving defence startups can compete with legacy primes on speed, and that transatlantic venture capital can flow into European sovereign weapons platforms without ceding operational control. Whether Germany's political environment lets that framing hold is the question worth watching.