Hermeus Raises $350M, Hits $1B Valuation to Accelerate Hypersonic Drone Development

New updates have been reported about Hermeus.

Hermeus has secured a $350 million funding package to advance its unmanned hypersonic aircraft program, lifting the company’s valuation to $1 billion and reinforcing its position in the fast-growing defense technology market. The round includes $200 million in new equity led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing backers including Canaan Partners, Founders Fund, In-Q-Tel, and RTX Ventures, plus new investors such as Cox Enterprises’ venture arm and Destiny Tech100.

The remaining $150 million is structured as debt, a move CEO AJ Piplica says is designed to fund capital-intensive hardware and manufacturing expansion while limiting shareholder dilution and preserving control as the cap table grows. Strategically, Hermeus has shifted from developing its own engine to modifying Pratt & Whitney’s proven F100 engine, a decision that shortened development timelines, improved technical reliability, and helped the company win additional U.S. government contracts.

This engine partnership with an RTX subsidiary has allowed Hermeus to diversify its roadmap, moving from a single long-term Mach 5 objective to a phased product strategy aligned with nearer-term Department of Defense demand. President Zach Shore said this approach simultaneously strengthens unit economics, advances technology maturation, and broadens the company’s addressable defense market. The strategy is unfolding against a wider surge in defense tech investment, with global VC funding in the sector surpassing $9 billion last year, including $2 billion from corporate investors.

On the technical front, Hermeus recently flew a full-scale demonstrator roughly the size of an F-16, following an earlier successful flight of a smaller aircraft, and aims for the next platform to achieve supersonic speeds, with a third aircraft already in development. Piplica describes the company’s philosophy as a rapid, iterative prototyping model similar to SpaceX’s, accepting controlled failures as an expected part of fast-cycle testing and emphasizing the need to build multiple airframes to compress development timelines.

This funding will support continued scaling of Hermeus’ workforce, which is approaching 300 employees, as it seeks scarce talent capable of designing and building new full-scale aircraft on an annual cadence. Management sees talent acquisition and development as a critical bottleneck and a key use of capital, given that such capabilities have largely disappeared from mainstream aerospace programs. Executives and investors will be watching how efficiently Hermeus converts this mix of equity and debt into contracted defense revenue, validated flight performance, and a repeatable production model for high-speed unmanned systems.