Valkyrie Dynamics raises €1M
Valkyrie Dynamics, a Ukrainian-Lithuanian defence hardware company building miniature radars that turn low-cost drones into all-weather precision interceptors, has raised €1M in a pre-seed round from Paris-based venture studio Hexa, with participation from defence tech angel investors.
Headquartered in Lithuania, Valkyrie established its physical R&D lab in Kyiv to iterate hardware in days rather than months, working directly alongside Ukrainian frontline operators. The company says attacks on Ukrainian cities are expected to intensify during what it calls “Shahed season”, from October through March.
Valkyrie Dynamics founder and CEO Marcin Kovalevskij, trained as an engineering physicist, previously built electronics and embedded flight systems at CNRS and Exotrail. Inspired by conversations with Ukrainian combat officers at the European Defence Tech Hackathon in London in 2025, he began developing the Heimdall concept on weekends while based in Lithuania, funding the earliest work himself.
After saving enough, he packed his equipment into two suitcases and moved to Kyiv to set up Valkyrie’s R&D lab. For the first five months, he slept on the floor of a factory that had previously taken missile hits. By October 2026, Valkyrie had a working prototype and joined Hexa Sprint Defense, a specialised acceleration programme for early-stage European defence and dual-use tech startups.
The funds will support Valkyrie’s product roadmap, including next-generation seekers with increased detection range and a wider field of view, and its plans to establish European technical integration hubs in late 2026 to serve NATO procurement programmes.
“Our mission is to make mass-scale air defence more affordable and expendable. We want to replace $3 million missiles with low-cost drone interceptors guided by more accessible radar technology. Giving these systems better sensors, and eventually fusing those with other components, is what will push the next stage of drone interception. It will make interceptors more autonomous and able to keep up with faster, jet-powered threats.”
