👯 Founder(s): Marcin Kovalevskij — Founder & CEO

📅 Founding year: 2025

🏭 Industry: Defense tech / dual-use hardware (radar, counter-drone)

💥 Problem: Modern air defense is shifting from multi-million-dollar missiles to low-cost autonomous drone interceptors — but most interceptors rely on optical/thermal cameras that fail in rain, fog, smoke and snow (bad weather cuts drone visibility by up to 80% beyond a few dozen metres). Russia is also replacing propeller Shaheds with faster jet-powered variants that typical interceptors can’t catch.

📣 Solution: Heimdall — a miniature onboard terminal-guidance radar seeker (~100g) that sits in an FPV interceptor’s nose cone. In the final 100–500m, it gives the operator a radar view that penetrates cloud and fog where cameras fail, so the target stays trackable in any weather. Supports both piloted FPV and autonomous flight (paired with a partner guidance module).

👥 Customers: Interceptor manufacturers and guidance-module builders (B2B), with end-use by Ukrainian frontline drone operators; longer-term NATO procurement programs.

🎳 Team size: 11-50

🌱 Stage: Pre-seed

💰 Investment amount: €1M

🚀 Funded by: Hexa (Paris-based venture studio, lead), with defence-tech angel investors. Valkyrie also joined Hexa Sprint Defense (its defence/dual-use acceleration program).

👁️‍🗨️ Investor’s perspective: Guillaume Lerouge, Partner at Hexa VC: “At Hexa Sprint Defense we build companies alongside founders, from the first customer to the first factory. Valkyrie is solving a problem every European army is about to face: drones that hide in the weather. They’re building it from Kyiv, where the feedback loop is measured in days, not years. We’re proud to have them as the first Ukrainian team in the programme.”

💡 It will be spent on: Manufacturing the first version of the radar seeker, next-generation seeker development and team expansion — with European technical integration hubs planned for late 2026.

💬 In their own words: Marcin Kovalevskij, Founder & CEO: “Our mission is to make mass-scale air defense more affordable and expendable. We want to replace $3M missiles with low-cost drone interceptors guided by more accessible radar technology… It will make interceptors more autonomous and able to keep up with faster, jet-powered threats.”

💪 Their specialty: Lightweight (~100g) and affordable (target <€300/unit at volume) versus competitors’ expensive ground radars or heavy civil-drone sensors. Built and field-tested in Kyiv in days-not-months iteration loops, directly with frontline operators. Recent flight tests with Korven Systems (Ukrainian-Estonian interceptor-autonomy developer). Roadmap: longer-range, wider-field seekers, plus radar for ground vehicles and other unmanned platforms. The final decision to engage always stays with a human pilot.

🔑 Business model: Sells/integrates its radar seeker hardware into third-party interceptors and guidance modules (B2B defense hardware).

💸 Funding so far: €1M

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