Our investment in INLEAP Photonics: Stopping drones safely with lasers instead of ammunition

We have invested in INLEAP Photonics, a Hanover company building laser systems that bring drones down in flight. The round is approximately €20 million and was led by UVC Partners, with participation also from HTGF, Balnord and Sentris.

The company was founded in 2023 as a spin-off from Laser Zentrum Hannover, one of Europe's leading laser research institutes. Marius Lammers and Felix Wellmann both came out of that institute with doctorates and years of work behind them on laser systems and optics. They founded the company with Katharina Haas, who led the commercial side of the spin-out and is CFO. The new capital goes into series production, further development of the technology, and building out sales and service across Germany and the rest of Europe.

A laser that is small enough to move and safe enough to use

Fastlight Shield, the company's drone defence system, steers its laser beam without the moving mirrors that conventional systems rely on. Removing the mechanical parts makes it faster onto a target, smaller to build and less prone to wear.

It holds the beam on a weak point of a drone until the aircraft comes down, in under a second. Because it can hold that point precisely, it needs far less power than the large high-energy laser programmes now under development in Europe, which is what keeps the whole system small enough to move around and light on power and cooling. A second product, Fastlight Held, puts the same effector on a small all-terrain unmanned ground vehicle for use where there is no fixed installation to defend from.

Two things follow from the design. Nothing is expended in an engagement except electricity, at a moment when the interceptors fired at drones can cost many times more than the drone itself. And the laser is eye-safe, which is what lets it be used over an airport terminal or a data centre and not only on a military range.

Together those properties open up the civilian market for protecting critical infrastructure alongside the defence one, and they are a large part of why we invested.

Tested by the customer before series production

INLEAP is already working with the German Federal Ministry of Defence and with the Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub. In April the company announced a partnership with STARK, the German defence manufacturer, to integrate Fastlight Shield into STARK's unmanned platforms.

That matters more than the usual early traction. Defence procurement rewards systems that have been tested by the customer and integrated into platforms the customer already operates, and both of those processes have started before series production. The order intake is what the new capital is being raised against.

Why we invested

Counter-drone spending in Europe is going to rise sharply over the next decade, and much of it will go on systems that stay in service for a long time. The companies that win those programmes will be the ones whose technology is already integrated and already tested when the orders come.

INLEAP has found a genuinely different way to build a laser effector rather than an incremental improvement on how everyone else does it, and it opens two markets instead of one. This is a German company built on German research, and the round behind it is European, which is how we think this technology should be owned. We are glad and proud to be backing Marius, Felix, Katharina and the team.

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