The first close of Tekever’s Series D has brought in $580M and put a $6.4B valuation on the Portuguese-British builder of autonomous systems.
Merlyn Advisors came aboard as a new strategic backer, while UC Investments and Baillie Gifford led the deal. The company expects further closes in the months ahead, with Crescent Cove, Ventura Capital and Iberis Capital among the existing holders taking part again. For the University of California’s investment arm, the check marks a first direct European investment.
Tekever’s home is Britain today, though its founding was in Portugal back in 2001. What it sells is unmanned aircraft wrapped in the software, sensors and analytics that turn aerial data into intelligence, and its AR5 airframe can stay aloft for roughly 20 hours with a 50kg payload. Since 2022, the company’s systems have accumulated more than 50,000 operational flight hours in Ukraine, a tally it now markets as evidence for long procurement cycles.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence picked Tekever this year for CORVUS, the Army’s new surveillance program, worth up to £400M over a decade. Chief executive Ricardo Mendes framed the stakes around the coming decades: the security and resilience of democratic societies, he said, would rest on AI, autonomy and sovereign technological capability.
Reordered, the recent European defense cycle reads like this: Stark closed €500M in June, Cambridge Aerospace added $300M in August, and July delivered $1.8B for Helsing and €1B for Quantum Systems.
