Alpine Eagle seeks $45 million to scale airborne counter-drone system

Why it matters

A $45 million round would move Alpine Eagle from a venture-backed prototype supplier toward scaled defense production, with its growth case tied directly to major government procurements.

Jan-Hendrik Boelens, the former Quantum Systems and Volocopter technology chief, is raising a $45 million Series A for Alpine Eagle, according to people familiar with the financing, as the Munich defense startup moves from military trials into larger production and procurement programs.

Expeditions Fund and IQ Capital are co-leading the round, the people said. HTGF, HCVC and Sentris Capital are among the participating investors. The investor group largely consists of existing Alpine Eagle backers, reducing the execution risk around a financing that would be substantially larger than Alpine Eagle's last disclosed round.

Boelens founded Alpine Eagle in 2023 with Timo Breuer, a former researcher at Fraunhofer and Microsoft Research. Boelens previously served as chief engineer at Airbus Helicopters, CTO of air-taxi developer Volocopter and CTO of Quantum Systems, the German drone manufacturer that raised $1.2 billion at an approximately $8 billion post-money valuation on July 2nd.

That employment history matters to Alpine Eagle's pitch. Boelens has worked across certified aerospace programs, a venture-backed aircraft developer and a defense-drone manufacturer. Alpine Eagle is applying those lessons to Sentinel, an airborne counter-drone system that uses networked sensor aircraft, software and interceptors to find and destroy hostile drones before they reach the assets being defended.

Taking the counter-drone fight into the air

Most counter-drone architectures place radars, jammers or guns on the ground. Sentinel moves much of that chain into the air, giving its sensors a wider view over buildings, vegetation and uneven terrain. Alpine Eagle says the system combines airborne radar, electro-optical sensors, edge processing and interceptors under one operating system.

The architecture is also designed to accept third-party aircraft and effectors. That approach lets Alpine Eagle sell the software and coordination layer while relying on established manufacturers for portions of the hardware supply chain.

Alpine Eagle delivered initial systems to the German Bundeswehr for trials in 2024 and later deployed Sentinel with Ukrainian forces, according to Alpine Eagle's published timeline. Alpine Eagle also participated in Project Vanaheim, a counter-drone trial involving the US and UK armed forces, and said in March that it had contracts with three additional European customers.

Those deployments followed a EUR 10.25 million seed round announced in March 2025. IQ Capital led that financing, with HTGF, Expeditions Fund and Sentris Capital participating alongside General Catalyst and HCVC.

Boelens told IQ Capital last year that securing a launch customer before Alpine Eagle exhausted its pre-seed capital was one of the venture's defining moments. He said the company prioritized customer contracts before committing to lengthy development programs.

The expansion depends on defense contracts converting

Alpine Eagle's ability to scale depends on converting military trials and procurement bids into awarded contracts. Contract timing depends on trials, budgets, export approvals and procurement decisions that can stretch across fiscal years. A shortlisted position does not carry the certainty of an awarded contract. The Series A would give Alpine Eagle enough manufacturing and working capital to pursue those programs without relying on each tender to fund the next stage of production.

Alpine Eagle has already started building that industrial base. In a March 19th production update, Alpine Eagle said headcount had grown from 12 people in 2024 to 50 in 2026, with a goal of reaching 100 this year. Alpine Eagle also outlined plans for a 2,000-square-meter interceptor facility near Munich and said a partnership with Dutch aircraft manufacturer DeltaQuad would provide access to established production capacity.

In June, Alpine Eagle signed an integration agreement with Latvia's Origin Robotics to connect the BLAZE radar-guided interceptor to Sentinel. The partners plan customer demonstrations, operational validation and a possible route to manufacturing BLAZE in Germany.

The mix of in-house software, airborne sensors and outside interceptors is central to Boelens' strategy. Building every component would require substantially more capital and expose Alpine Eagle to the same long development cycles Boelens encountered in conventional aerospace. Integrating existing aircraft and weapons lets Alpine Eagle focus engineering resources on sensor fusion, autonomous coordination and the software connecting detection to interception.

The $45 million round would finance Alpine Eagle's attempt to turn that architecture into a repeatable defense product. The near-term test is commercial: whether trials and shortlisted tenders convert quickly enough to support the company's production expansion.