More than €1m · Other round · Cybersecurity, Defence · Hürth, Germany
Hürth-based Skylance has raised more than €1m in financing to accelerate development of DroneHammer, its compact interceptor for small drones, and prepare the system for industrialisation and series production. NRW.BANK contributed €500,000: it converted an existing €200,000 loan into equity and added €300,000 of new capital. A consortium of entrepreneurs and investors from Düsseldorf’s IACD network also participated.
The company is developing and testing DroneHammer with the German Armed Forces. According to NRW.BANK’s announcement, the roughly 700-gram interceptor uses laser guidance, software algorithms and image processing, travels at more than 600 km/h and is intended to cost less than €3,000 per unit. Those performance and cost figures remain company claims rather than evidence of a deployed product.
From prototype economics to procurement readiness
Skylance is targeting the cost imbalance at the lowest layer of air defence: cheap, agile drones can make it uneconomic to respond with interceptors costing many times more. The company says DroneHammer is designed for targets within a 100–1,500-metre perimeter and can connect to existing command-and-control systems. Its operating concept relies on external sensors or a command system to detect the threat, followed by laser designation and autonomous terminal guidance. That architecture could let customers add a lower-cost kinetic layer without replacing their wider detection stack.
The same architecture makes integration and validation central to the commercial case. DroneHammer’s target price matters only if Skylance can reproduce the claimed performance, connect reliably to fielded sensors and command systems, and manufacture the interceptor at scale. The current work with the Bundeswehr gives the company a relevant test environment, but neither the company nor its investor has announced completed procurement or serial production.
Skylance was founded in 2025 by Philipp Bohne, Tobias de Taillez and Olaf Wollersheim. Specialist defence publication hartpunkt reported the system’s first component-level flight tests that year, including separate work on the carrier, optics and warhead. The new financing is therefore aimed at moving an early tested design through further development and towards repeatable production, rather than scaling an already finished product.
Sources checked:
NRW.BANK announcement · Skylance company site · hartpunkt product testing · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
