The company Castelion, founded in 2022 by former SpaceX executives, raised one billion dollars in a Series C, at an estimated valuation of 13 billion dollars (around 11.9 billion euros). The round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Carlyle and JPMorgan Chase. The product is not an app and not a chip. It is hypersonic missiles.

The company's idea was different from that of the big defence contractors from the very start: the same weapons, but produced faster and cheaper. In four years of existence it has already collected over 500 million dollars in contracts with the US military. The fresh capital goes into producing the Blackbeard missiles, named after the English pirate, at the factory in New Mexico.

Why now

The timing is not accidental. The Pentagon wants more of this weaponry because American stocks of hypersonic missiles, the ones flying at over five times the speed of sound, lag behind China's. Castelion is selling a solution to that gap, and investors are buying exactly that promise. Of the billion, 800 million is equity and 250 million a revolving credit line.

It is worth pausing at that figure. Thirteen billion dollars is the valuation of a four-year-old company making weapons not yet deployed in serial use. That is not a production number but an expectation that the orders will keep coming. Andreessen Horowitz, Carlyle and JPMorgan did not buy a factory, they bought a position that the next decade will pay a great deal for fast weapons.

Once venture capital from Silicon Valley starts financing missiles rather than delivery apps, that says something about where investors expect the world to go. Defence was for decades a closed club of a few enormous contractors with slow contracts. Now it is being entered by people who came from the satellite-launch rocket industry, with the same logic: produce faster, sell more.

The Balkans know this scene from the other side of the table: for decades the region has been a buyer of other people's military systems, not a producer. Which is why the thing that looks like an ordinary business plan from Torrance, California is best seen from here. The question is not whether hypersonic missiles will be produced faster and cheaper. That is already decided, with a billion dollars and three banking names beneath it. The question is what it means when stockpiles are being filled before anyone explains which war they are meant for.