Five Times the Valuation in 16 Months: Tekever's $580M Series D Makes Europe's Drone Champion a $6.4B Bet

The money moving into European defence technology used to arrive in tens of millions. On 23 September 2026, it arrived in half a billion — and it landed in Lisbon.

TEKEVER, Europe’s leading provider of AI-powered autonomous systems, announced the first close of a US$580 million Series D financing, valuing the company at US$6.4 billion. The round was led by UC Investments — the University of California’s investment office, which chose Tekever for its first direct investment in Europe — alongside Baillie Gifford, the Scottish asset manager renewing a conviction it first expressed in 2024. Merlyn Advisors joined as a new strategic investor, with continued backing from existing shareholders Crescent Cove, Ventura Capital and Iberis Capital.

Sixteen months ago, Tekever was a European unicorn valued at just over £1 billion. Today’s close puts a 6.4 on the dollar side of its name — a near five-fold jump in valuation in less than a year and a half, and one of the largest rounds ever closed by a European defence-tech company.

What the money is for

The financing will support Tekever’s next phase of growth: deepening its international presence, expanding industrial and technological capabilities, and accelerating strategic acquisitions. The company has been explicit about the pace it wants. In 2026 alone it has acquired Flowcopter, a breakthrough-propulsion developer; unveiled the AR6 family of heavy-lift autonomous systems; opened a US office in Fayetteville, North Carolina; and been selected by CNES and DGA in France to develop technologies for a sovereign SAR satellite capability.

Importantly, today’s announcement is only the first close. Tekever expects to complete additional Series D closings over the coming months to bring aboard further strategic investors — meaning the final raise could climb well beyond $580 million.

The round lands shortly after one of the company’s most consequential wins: selection by the UK Ministry of Defence to deliver CORVUS, the British Army’s new surveillance capability, under a programme worth up to £400 million over ten years. CORVUS is built on Tekever’s battle-proven AR5 platform and combines AI-enabled autonomy with sovereign industrial capability — a template the company clearly intends to replicate across Europe.

Why UC Investments matters

The University of California’s endowment manages well over $150 billion across its pension and endowment pools, and its decision to make Tekever its first direct European investment is the kind of endorsement that reshapes how institutional capital views a sector.

“At UC Investments, we take a long-term view and look for companies with both technical depth and the ability to execute at scale,” said Jagdeep Singh Bachher, the university’s chief investment officer. “TEKEVER has built an exceptional technology platform over more than two decades with a proven record of operational success. Our conviction rests on Ricardo and his team, and on the growing weight of European technology in global markets.”

For a company founded in 2001 and headquartered in Lisbon, with facilities in Bristol, Toulouse, Estonia, Ukraine and North Carolina, that sentence carries weight. Patient institutional capital is precisely what capital-hungry hardware businesses — drones, autonomy stacks, satellite payloads — have historically struggled to attract in Europe, where defence tech was long seen as too slow, too political or too niche for endowment money.

A former defence secretary in the cap table

Merlyn Advisors’ arrival as a strategic investor is notable for who sits behind it: Sir Ben Wallace, portfolio manager at Merlyn and the UK’s Secretary of State for Defence from 2019 to 2023 — the minister who ran British defence procurement through the Ukraine war’s most volatile years.

“Europe’s security will increasingly depend on its ability to build technology companies that can innovate at speed, scale industrially and deliver capabilities that respond to real operational needs,” Wallace said. “TEKEVER has a proven track record that shows it can do all three.”

When the person who used to sign the procurement decisions starts investing his fund’s money in a supplier, markets read that as more than a passive endorsement. Wallace’s involvement signals that Tekever’s pipeline — CORVUS, Project Nyx for the British Army, the Portuguese Air Force’s AR5 contract, partnerships stretching from Taiwan to Estonia — is expected to convert into revenue at industrial scale.

The context: Europe’s defence-tech re-rating

Tekever’s close is the latest and loudest data point in a broader re-rating of European defence technology. The sector raised around $3 billion across 2024–2025, led by drone and autonomy startups shaped by the war in Ukraine. In 2026 the numbers have stopped being incremental.

The strategic logic driving capital is straightforward. Russia’s war continues to demonstrate that cheap, autonomous, software-defined systems can impose asymmetric costs on expensive conventional platforms. European governments have responded with rearmament budgets and a stated preference for sovereign suppliers over American or Israeli primes. Companies like Tekever — vertically integrated, software-centric, and battle-proven in Ukrainian skies and Atlantic maritime patrols — sit exactly where that money needs to go.

Baillie Gifford’s Chris Evdaimon framed the company’s edge: “Its vertically integrated, software-centric model gives it an unusual ability to translate technology into operational capability quickly, while its experience in demanding real-world environments provides a depth of learning that is extremely difficult to replicate.”

What to watch

Three questions will decide whether the $6.4 billion valuation holds. First, conversion: can CORVUS and the British programmes move from selection to delivery on schedule? Second, industrialisation: Tekever is building production sites in France and the UK — execution there determines whether it can meet demand at scale. Third, the follow-on closings: the quality of strategic investors in the additional Series D tranches will signal how deep institutional appetite for European defence tech really runs.

What is already clear is the direction. “This investment gives us the resources to move faster, scale further and continue building a global technology leader from Europe,” said Ricardo Mendes, Tekever’s founder and CEO. Sixteen months ago that sentence would have sounded aspirational. With $580 million in the bank, UC’s endowment on the register and a former defence secretary among the believers, it now sounds like a plan.