Hermeus Announces $350 Million Series C Financing Led by Khosla Ventures
Funding, which was raised at a $1 billion valuation, will be directed toward continuing to build the fastest aircraft in the world for American warfighters, according to Hermeus.
(Atlanta, Georgia) Defense aviation company Hermeus announced today that it has closed $350 million in Series C financing, in a round led by Khosla Ventures – which valued the company at $1 billion – in order to move from prototyping to mission-ready, high-Mach platforms, in order to accomplish Hermeus’ goal of delivering the world’s fastest unmanned aircraft.
Image courtesy of Hermeus.
Per Hermeus, with the successful flight of its Quarterhorse Mk 2.1, supersonic flight is now an imminent goal; the team is now scaling to a fleet of three F-16 scale aircraft, accelerating the company’s path to Mach 3 and starting customer payload integration.
Hermeus’ Series C financing round also included continued support from Canaan Partners, Founders Fund, RTX Ventures, Bling Capital, and In-Q-Tel. Funds joining as new investors include Cox Enterprises and their venture fund Socium Ventures, Destiny Tech100, Georgia Tech Foundation, 137 Ventures and GSBackers, among others, according to today’s press release from Hermeus.
Debt capital is being provided by Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank, Pinegrove Venture Partners, Hercules Capital, and Trinity Capital, per Hermeus.
“Speed is life for us,” said AJ Piplica, Founder and CEO of Hermeus. “This new funding lets us build multiple aircraft at the same time and scale our manufacturing capabilities, adding more hardware richness and robustness to our program. That accelerates our path to ramjet-powered flight. We are grateful for the support of our long-term partners who share our vision of building fast planes fast. Together, we’re bringing scalable, asymmetric capabilities to our national security customers.”
The Series C round brings Hermeus’ total capital raised to over $500 million, reaching a $1 billion post-money valuation; specifically, the financing is comprised of $200 million in equity and $150 million in debt.
“We’ve been believers in Hermeus from the start, and we couldn’t be happier to lead this Series C,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. “The team is on a clear trajectory to solve a critical capability gap for their customers by building, flying, and iterating at a pace that matches the modern battlefield.”
In order to hit its upcoming milestones, Hermeus is growing its prototyping footprint with a new headquarters in El Segundo, California, while the Atlanta facility shifts its focus to production, according to the company.
