Cambridge Aerospace

Cambridge Aerospace is a British air-defence technology company founded in September 2024 by Steven Barrett, an aeronautics engineer who left a professorship at MIT to join the University of Cambridge, together with Chris Sylvan, previously Anduril's head of business development for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and co-founder Junaid Hussain. The company designs low-cost interceptor systems intended to counter cheap one-way attack drones and cruise missiles at a fraction of the cost of legacy air-defence missiles.

Its first product, Skyhammer, is a modular interceptor missile built to bring down Shahed-style attack drones and entered rapid deployment with the UK Armed Forces and Gulf partners in 2026. The company is also developing Starhammer, a faster interceptor aimed at higher-value missile threats targeted for market entry around 2027; Looking Glass, a multistatic radar system; and Nightstar, a solid rocket motor line intended to reduce reliance on non-domestic propulsion supply chains.

Cambridge Aerospace has grown quickly on the back of the war in Ukraine and NATO members' push for cheaper counter-drone systems. It has more than 250 employees, roughly two-thirds of them in technical and engineering roles, and operations reaching Germany, Poland, Norway, Ukraine and Australia in addition to the UK. Former UK defence secretary Grant Shapps served briefly as the company's chairman before resigning at the end of April 2026, after the government's ethics watchdog found he had allowed a perception of impropriety to develop around a UK Skyhammer contract.

The company raised roughly $136 million across an earlier pre-seed, seed and Series A before closing a $200 million Series B in April 2026 at a $1.3 billion valuation, co-led by Elad Gil & Co and Spark Capital. Four months later, in August 2026, it raised a $300 million Series C at a $3.4 billion post-money valuation led by DFJ Growth, with Lux Capital, Accel, Lakestar, Never Lift, Ora Global and Elad Gil & Co also participating — more than doubling its valuation in under four months.