Tekever Raises $580M Series D at $6.4B Valuation

Tekever raised $580 million in the first close of a Series D round, the Portuguese-British drone maker said Wednesday, valuing the company at $6.4 billion in a round led by UC Investments and Baillie Gifford.

The financing is UC Investments' first direct investment in Europe, according to Tekever's announcement. Merlyn Advisors joined as a new strategic investor, and existing shareholders Crescent Cove, Ventura Capital and Iberis Capital returned. Tekever said it expects additional closings of the Series D to bring in further strategic investors, without giving a timeline.

UC Investments makes its first direct bet on Europe

TechFundingNews reported that the new valuation is nearly five times what Tekever carried before this round, a multiple the company's own release does not state. Founder and chief executive Ricardo Mendes said Tekever now employs more than 1,500 people. UC Investments Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher said in the release that Tekever "has built exceptional technology with proven operational success over two decades," and Baillie Gifford's Chris Evdaimon said the company's "vertically integrated model translates technology into capability quickly."

A £400 million UK contract signed a week earlier

The round lands a week after the UK Ministry of Defence selected Tekever to deliver the British Army's CORVUS surveillance programme, a contract worth up to £400 million, or about $530 million, over 10 years, built on Tekever's AR5 system and replacing the Army's Watchkeeper drones. Tekever says its drones have logged more than 50,000 operational hours in Ukraine since 2022, a figure reported by DroneXL that comes from the company itself rather than an independent flight log.

Why funders are betting ahead of the battlefield record

Tekever's valuation still trails two European rivals. Munich-based Helsing has raised $1.8 billion at an $18 billion valuation, and Quantum Systems has raised $1.2 billion at an $8 billion valuation, according to TechFundingNews; in the U.S., Anduril has raised $5 billion at a $61 billion valuation. Most of that European money arrived before combat testing: DroneXL reported that Helsing's drones hit five of 14 targets in evaluations, and that rival Stark raised €500 million after its drones missed all four attempts in October 2025 trials.

1. Tekever6.4 $ billion
2. Quantum Systems8 $ billion
3. Helsing18 $ billion
4. Anduril (U.S.)61 $ billion

Source: TechFundingNews, accessed 2026-09-25

Former UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, now a portfolio manager at investor Merlyn Advisors, said Tekever "has a proven track record that shows it can do" innovation speed, industrial scaling and meeting operational needs together, a contrast DroneXL drew with competitors funded mostly on pitch decks. Tekever has not disclosed a revenue figure alongside the round, and its statement does not say what portion of the $580 million is earmarked for the acquisitions it says it plans to pursue.

The raise adds Tekever to a 2026 pattern of oversized late-stage rounds, where large single checks increasingly arrive before a company's commercial record is fully public. Warehouse and defense robotics are both leaning on similar logic, from Tekever's Ukraine flight hours to the order book behind Agility Robotics' Digit 5 humanoid: investors funding deployed hardware ahead of the audited numbers that would otherwise justify the price. The scale of Tekever's later Series D closings, which the company has not dated, is the next figure to watch.