Frankenburg Technologies, a European defence technology startup focused on affordable, mass-manufacturable missile systems and sovereign production capacity, has raised €30 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Plural and followed by SmartCap, bringing the company’s total funding to €40 million.
Founded in 2024 by Taavi Madiberk and Marko Virkebau, the Tallinn-headquartered company was established in response to a structural shift in Europe’s security landscape. While modern aerial threats such as low-cost unmanned systems and cruise-missile-like targets can be produced rapidly and at scale, interceptor production has traditionally prioritized performance over speed, cost efficiency, and regeneration capacity.
Under the leadership of CEO Kusti Salm, former Permanent Secretary of Estonia’s Ministry of Defence, Frankenburg brings together senior defence leaders and missile engineers with experience across major European and allied missile programs, including IRIS-T, SPEAR3, Storm Shadow, and Brimstone. The company is positioning itself as a new European missile house with sovereign production infrastructure capable of delivering low-cost, precision-guided systems across air, surface, and maritime domains.
Frankenburg aims to address what it describes as Europe’s acute air-defence bottleneck by rebuilding the economics of interceptor production. Its missile systems are designed from inception for affordability, mass manufacturability, and compatibility with existing sensors, command-and-control systems, and layered air-defence architectures. The company says its interceptors are intended to be an order of magnitude cheaper to use than traditional approaches.
In just 13 months, Frankenburg has advanced its first interceptor, the Mark I short-range air-defence missile, from concept to advanced testing and industrialisation. The Mark I was developed with constrained requirements to enable rapid, scale production and is built using a containerised, modular manufacturing concept designed to localise missile production close to operational needs.
The new capital will be used to establish multi-site missile production across Europe, with a focus on resilience and regeneration. Plans include standing up two EU-based mass-production sites designed for full-rate output and rapid scaling, with production capacity targeted at 100 missiles per day per site. The company also intends to secure long-lead components and early production stock, establish dedicated rocket motor and warhead production capabilities within the EU, expand its missile hubs in the UK and Germany, and grow engineering, safety, quality, and export-control teams.
Frankenburg currently operates across eight countries — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Poland, and Ukraine — with local entities and teams focused on engineering and industrialisation, alongside a growing network of industrial collaborations across land, air, and maritime domains.
The company’s distributed model centers on manufacturing systems where they are used, aiming to shorten supply chains, create skilled industrial jobs, and ensure that defence spending strengthens national economies. By combining modular manufacturing, commercially available components, and rapid qualification cycles, Frankenburg seeks to enable sustained air defense readiness even under prolonged stress or wartime conditions.
While the Mark I addresses immediate counter-UAS and short-range air-defence needs, the Series A funding will support expansion into a broader missile portfolio. Future programmes are expected to expand to include additional air- and surface-launched precision capabilities built on the same scalable manufacturing framework.
KEY QUOTES
“For too long, Europe outsourced strength. That must end. I founded Frankenburg because Europe needs a SpaceX-style shift in defence missiles: build fast, move faster, and win on cost and performance. We are sharply focused on counter-drone missiles today, but this is only the first step. Long-term, we are building a global missile leader, delivering lower costs and aiming for higher performance than US or Chinese incumbents across all key missile categories.”
Taavi Madiberk, Founder And Chairman, Frankenburg Technologies
“Europe’s deterrence problem is not just about budgets, it’s about availability. You cannot deter with systems that are too scarce, too slow to replace, or too expensive to use at scale. Frankenburg was built to restore speed, scale and sustainability to missile defence. This funding allows us to put real industrial capacity behind that mission and build missile systems Europe can actually afford to fire and produce at scale.”
Kusti Salm, CEO, Frankenburg Technologies
“In a world where an adversary can deploy tens of thousands of autonomous attack drones, staying safe is not rocket science: defence must be cheap, fast and count in millions of units available. Frankenburg is tackling one of Europe’s most urgent defence challenges by building credible deterrence with missiles, at startup speed. The team combines deep defence expertise with a fundamentally different manufacturing mindset, and we believe this approach can have a lasting impact on Europe’s security and industrial resilience.”
Sten Tamkivi, Partner, Plural
