Acodyne raises €2.5 million capital for high-speed unmanned military and offshore logistics

Dan­ish start­up Aco­dyne has raised €2.5 mil­lion in pre-seed fund­ing to scale its unmanned car­go air­craft for heavy-lift logis­tics in defence, off­shore and remote oper­a­tions.

The round, joint­ly led by Swedish defence VC Gung­nir Cap­i­tal and Dan­ish PSV Hafni­um with par­tic­i­pa­tion from EIFO, SAP9 Group and GreenUP IV Invest, sup­ports Acodyne’s con­tri­bu­tion to Euro­pean and NATO logis­tics resilience and to Dan­ish indus­tri­al growth in defence-tech.

Jas­mi­na Pless, Co-founder & CCO, Aco­dyne, said: “This round gives us the run­way to take Aco­dyne from val­i­dat­ed con­cept to flight-test­ed plat­form, and to do it along­side investors who under­stand both the oper­a­tional real­i­ty of defence and off­shore logis­tics and the tech­ni­cal demands of build­ing heavy-lift unmanned air­craft.

“The cross-bor­der set­up with Gung­nir, PSV Hafni­um and EIFO is a strong sig­nal that Euro­pean cap­i­tal is will­ing to back the hard­ware bets need­ed for true logis­tics resilience.”

A logis­tics gap heli­copters can’t keep fill­ing

In defence, resup­ply still relies on either slow land trans­porta­tion or heli­copter mis­sions that expose per­son­nel and air­craft to threat. In off­shore oper­a­tions, a sin­gle miss­ing com­po­nent can halt pro­duc­tion at hun­dreds of thou­sands of euros per day, and a heli­copter is typ­i­cal­ly the only way to deliv­er it on time.

In remote regions such as Green­land, where towns are not con­nect­ed by roads, crit­i­cal sup­plies can take days to arrive. Demand for resilient, on-demand logis­tics is ris­ing across all three areas, and the manned
heli­copter is no longer enough on its own.

Built for the mis­sions where speed mat­ters

Aco­dyne devel­ops unmanned car­go air­craft for the most time-crit­i­cal heavy-lift mis­sions, com­bin­ing ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing with fixed-wing flight at jet speeds. The plat­form is all-elec­tric, mod­u­lar and built to deliv­er pay­loads direct­ly to for­ward drop-off points where heli­copters are today the only fast option. Auton­o­my is han­dled by eTHOR, an AI flight stack devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with DTU Com­pute.

Max Vill­man, Man­ag­ing Part­ner, Gung­nir Cap­i­tal, said: “Aco­dyne is a fun­da­men­tal­ly new take on unmanned mil­i­tary logis­tics: jet-class speed, heli­copter-class pay­load, full ground-to-air auton­o­my, all-elec­tric.

“It col­laps­es one of the most expen­sive line items in mod­ern oper­a­tions, manned heli­copter logis­tics, into a plat­form that needs no crew in the threat enve­lope. NATO needs resilient, scal­able resup­ply that works. This is exact­ly the kind of oper­a­tional­ly dri­ven defence-tech Gung­nir Cap­i­tal was built to back: tech­ni­cal teams solv­ing real warfight­er prob­lems with hard­ware engi­neered to ship.“

From demon­stra­tor to oper­a­tional plat­form

Aco­dyne is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its first mod­el (the E100), with ini­tial flight tests planned before
the end of 2026. The pre-seed fund­ing sup­ports pro­to­type devel­op­ment and flight test­ing in real
mis­sion envi­ron­ments, while lay­ing the ground­work for scal­ing toward com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.

Mar­i­anne Hyltoft, Man­ag­ing Part­ner, PSV Hafni­um, added: “We backed Aco­dyne ear­ly, and it was their engi­neer­ing progress, includ­ing inde­pen­dent third-par­ty val­i­da­tion, that con­vinced us to help bring Gung­nir and EIFO into the round. This fund­ing takes Aco­dyne from val­i­dat­ed con­cept to pre-pro­duc­tion pro­to­type, and toward an aer­i­al logis­tics net­work for defence, infra­struc­ture and remote oper­a­tions.”

A mar­ket open­ing up

EU ini­tia­tives such as U‑space are paving the way for unmanned air­craft to oper­ate in reg­u­lat­ed cor­ri­dors across rur­al and inter-city routes in the future. In par­al­lel, NATO and the push for Euro­pean defence-indus­tri­al auton­o­my are dri­ving pub­lic and pri­vate demand for unmanned plat­forms. Togeth­er with rapid advances in AI and bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy, that opens unmanned heavy-lift logis­tics as a new mar­ket cat­e­go­ry, with appli­ca­tions well beyond defence.

Acodyne’s four co-founders bring back­grounds from the Dan­ish Min­istry of Defence,Scandinavian Air­lines, Cob­ham Aero­space Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and DTU Space. CEO Mads Schnack has worked on counter-drone sys­tems and JTAC at the Dan­ish Min­istry of Defence.

CTO Claes Nico­laisen is a heli­copter and fixed-wing pilot with 25 years in avi­a­tion. Chief Elec­tron­ic Engi­neer Mar­tin Arndt brings 25 years in aero­space com­mu­ni­ca­tions and air­craft sys­tems cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. CCO Jas­mi­na Pless is a for­mer eco­nom­ic diplo­mat who sup­port­ed deep tech com­pa­nies in Sil­i­con Val­ley. The wider team num­bers ten.