HyImpulse raises over €50M to scale Europe’s hybrid rocket launches
HyImpulse adds over €50M to its Series A, co-led by JOIN Capital and Ace Capital Partners, to fly SR75 from SaxaVord and put the 600 kg SL1 orbital rocket on the pad in 2027.
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Founded 2018 · Neuenstadt am Kocher, Germany
German launch company HyImpulse has raised more than €50 million in a Series A extension co-led by JOIN Capital and Ace Capital Partners, capital meant to fly its SR75 rocket from Scotland this year and put its SL1 orbital vehicle on the pad in 2027.
Europe still buys most of its rides to orbit from someone else – and yet the money to change that is now arriving in size, and this week it arrived in a town of 10,000 people in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Below, I lay out the round, the company behind it, and why a paraffin-fuelled rocket from Neuenstadt am Kocher says more about our launch ambitions than any strategy paper.
Two new co-leads, the DLR, and a €65M Series A
HyImpulse announced the round on 2 September 2026: more than €50 million in fresh equity, structured as an extension of its Series A. JOIN Capital and Ace Capital Partners co-led, and neither was in the original round – a detail worth noticing, because new leads writing into an extension is a bet on trajectory, not loyalty. North Ventures, BW-Capital, Bayern Kapital and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) joined them, with existing backer Campus Founders Ventures following on (Tech.eu, 2 September 2026).
The extension takes the full Series A past €65 million, on top of the €15 million equity first close of October 2025, and lifts HyImpulse’s cumulative funding – equity and public support combined – beyond €125 million (European Spaceflight, 2 September 2026).
The company says the capital goes to accelerating the development and commercialisation of its launch services: a second SR75 flight from SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland by the end of 2026, the maiden flight of the orbital SL1, and expanded production capacity across its sites. “Europe needs sovereign, responsive and economically sustainable launch capabilities,” said co-founder and CEO Christian Schmierer in the announcement.
A DLR spin-off that runs its rockets on candle wax
HyImpulse was founded in 2018 as a spin-off of the DLR by Christian Schmierer, Mario Kobald, Konstantin Tomilin and Ulrich Fischer, and now counts more than 100 people across Neuenstadt am Kocher, Ottobrunn and Glasgow (EU-Startups, September 2026). Its bet is hybrid propulsion: a paraffin-based fuel burned with liquid oxygen. The fuel is, in essence, refined candle wax – cheaper to produce, safer to handle and store than the cryogenic or hypergolic alternatives, and nobody at the test stand needs a blast bunker quite so urgently.
The SR75, its suborbital vehicle, flew its first campaign from the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia in May 2024. The SL1, a three-stage orbital rocket designed to carry 600 kg to low Earth orbit, is targeted for a first flight in 2027. Behind both sits an order book that already exceeds €350 million across the suborbital and orbital programmes (European Spaceflight, 2 September 2026) – a rare thing in launch, where revenue usually arrives years after the renders.
Sizing the queue for a ride to orbit
So how big is the market these rockets are being built for? Global space launch services were worth $14.9 billion in 2023 and are projected to reach $41.3 billion by 2030, a 15.6% CAGR over 2024-2030 (Grand View Research, 2024). The uncomfortable pairing: the overwhelming majority of that revenue is booked by American providers, with SpaceX alone flying more mass to orbit than the rest of the world combined. Europe’s share of its own demand is the gap this generation of launch startups exists to close.
For scale from our own database: two days before this round, a Japanese industrial group led €108 million into a Spanish rocket company – and HyImpulse’s extension now stands among the largest German rounds we have tracked this quarter. A 15.6% growth market is forgiving of a Series A company still proving its orbital vehicle; it is far less forgiving of a continent that keeps outsourcing the ride.
Sovereign launch is now a fundable thesis
The pattern in this cap table is the story. Ace Capital Partners invests in aerospace and defence; the DLR is putting money directly into its own spin-off; BW-Capital and Bayern Kapital are regional public investors from Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bavaria. That is not a tourist syndicate chasing a hot sector – it is Germany’s industrial and institutional machinery deciding that launch is infrastructure. The good news is that the demand side is moving too: SaxaVord gives Europe a licensed northern launch site, and institutional programmes from IRIS² to national defence budgets keep adding smallsats that need a ride from European soil.
What we are watching from here: whether the second SR75 flight leaves Scotland on schedule this year, whether the SL1 holds its 2027 date, and how much of that €350 million order book converts into flown missions rather than polite letters of intent. Every European round we track lands in our fundraising database, and launch is becoming one of its busiest columns.
The goal was never to out-build SpaceX by Tuesday. The goal is reliable European access to orbit at a price a smallsat builder can plan around – and for the first time in years, the capital, the spaceports and the order books are pointing the same way. Let’s get it on the pad!
