North Vector Raises $20m+ for CM-70 Interceptor

North Vector Dynamics, a Calgary company building a small missile designed to shoot down drones, has raised more than US$20m (C$29m) in a Series A round. It says the money will take its CM-70 interceptor from validation towards production.

The round values the company at “more than $90 million USD”, according to its announcement on GlobeNewswire on 26 October. North Vector calls it “one of Canada’s largest defence technology financings”. The company has not disclosed a unit price, test results or any customer for the CM-70, so the raise is a bet on a product that has yet to show what it costs or how it performs.

In brief

North Vector Dynamics has closed a Series A of more than US$20m, valuing it at more than US$90m.
The round was led by Tech Horizons, a venture fund set up in partnership with the Czech defence group CSG, which also invested.
The money goes to manufacturing, supply chain and new US and European offices. No price, test results or customers have been disclosed.

Investors include CSG and a fund it helped set up

The round was led by Tech Horizons, a European venture fund that the release says was set up through a partnership between venture capital professionals and CSG, the Czech defence group also known as Czechoslovak Group. Tech Horizons also backed North Vector’s seed round; Matej Luhový, a partner at the fund, said it invested “this spring as its first European investor”. ONE9, Garage Capital, CSG, Ripple Ventures, Feld Ventures and Conconi Growth Partners also took part, the company says.

The CSG link runs deeper than the cheque. Four days before the round was announced, North Vector and CSG signed a memorandum of understanding to explore European manufacturing and supply chains and the integration of the CM-70 into CSG’s systems. That release says the intellectual property stays in Canada. The MOU builds on a strategic investment in North Vector that CSG announced in August.

North Vector says it will spend the new money on manufacturing and assembly, bringing more of its supply chain in-house, new offices in the US and Europe, and hiring. “Allied forces need affordable, producible air defence at scale, and they need it now,” said chief executive Dr Paul Ziadé. “This round gives us the capital and the industrial reach to move from validation toward production volume and into Allied markets.”

What North Vector says the CM-70 is

The company describes the CM-70 as a “low-cost, precision-guided counter-drone missile interceptor” designed for fast, highly manoeuvrable drones. It says the missile is ITAR-free, meaning it is not bound by US arms export rules, and has an open architecture so it can plug into layered air defence networks.

North Vector’s CM-70 product page lists a mass of 3 kg, a length of 0.9 m, a range of 3.5 km and a speed of 900 km/h. It uses semi-active laser guidance, in which the missile homes on a laser spot aimed at the target, plus what the company calls “AI-enhanced terminal guidance” for the final approach. The page says it can be fired from the ground, a vehicle or an aircraft against small to medium drones, and that it costs a “fraction of the cost of traditional interceptors”. These are the company’s design figures. It has not published test data.

North Vector was founded in 2022 by Ziadé and chief science officer Dr Craig Johansen, both former engineering professors at the University of Calgary, with Dr Colin Hill. It says Defence Research and Development Canada, the military’s research agency, gave early funding and continues to support its testing. Its stated long-term aim is “full-spectrum missile capability, from counter-UAS solutions to hypersonics”.

Luhový said the technology addresses “how to protect soldiers and critical infrastructure from large-scale drone and loitering munition attacks in a cost-effective manner”.

A cheap interceptor still has to name its price

The CM-70 joins a crowded field of companies promising to make shooting down a drone cheaper than building one. In the past month TSN has covered Germany’s Helsing, which says its Contra interceptors will cost under €100,000 each, and US start-up CHAOS Industries, which unveiled its VESPID family of low-cost interceptors without a unit price. The US Army has also paid Epirus to make its Leonidas microwave system mobile, a different answer to the same problem.

North Vector sits at the light end of that spectrum. A 3 kg missile is small enough to carry on a vehicle or aircraft, which is the selling point, but “a fraction of the cost” is a comparison without a number. Until the company gives a price, a buyer cannot judge it against Helsing’s figure, against guns or against jamming.

The investor list says more than the specification sheet. With CSG both investing and exploring European production, North Vector has a route to manufacture outside Canada, which matters more for a weapon meant to be made in volume than a seed-stage prototype does. The next things to watch are a published test, a first order and a unit price. North Vector has disclosed none of the three.