Bridgepoint Weighs $1 Billion Sale Of MyDefence, The Counter-Drone Firm Guarding World Cup Airspace

Private equity owner Bridgepoint is preparing to sell MyDefence, the Danish counter-drone company whose jammers and detectors are helping guard airspace at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, in a deal that could value the business at around $1 billion. The London-listed firm has hired an adviser to prepare an auction toward the end of this year, and several military contractors and buyout firms have already signaled interest, according to the Financial Times.

The valuation is striking for a company Bridgepoint took majority control of less than two years ago. MyDefence’s sales are reportedly set to more than double in 2026, the kind of growth curve that turns a mid-market industrial bet into a billion-dollar exit. I have been tracking this company since it planted a U.S. manufacturing flag in Oklahoma City in February, and the throughline is hard to miss: the counter-drone buildout I have covered all year is now generating returns large enough to interest the people who buy and flip defense businesses for a living.

The timing of the sale process is not accidental. It lands during the exact tournament its hardware is protecting.

MyDefence Builds Radio-Frequency Detection And Jamming Hardware For Frontline Operators

MyDefence develops radio-frequency detection and targeted electronic jamming systems designed to protect people and infrastructure from drones. Founded by former Danish military officers and engineers in 2013, the company builds wearable, vehicle-mounted, and perimeter products rather than the fixed radar installations that dominate the category.

Its product line reads like a kennel. The Pitbull is a jammer small enough to be worn by a soldier. The Dobermann is a larger jammer built to mount on vehicles and boats. The Wingman handles detection. The design philosophy starts with the individual operator and scales up, which is the opposite of how most of the industry approaches the problem. When I covered the Oklahoma City factory opening, the detail that stuck with me was the weight: a 5.5-pound kit that needs no training and works out of the box is a fundamentally different bet than a $500,000 radar tower.

That bet has battlefield mileage. The company has roughly 2,000 Wingman units deployed in Ukraine, detecting hostile drones on the front lines. In July 2025 it landed a $26 million order from the U.S. Army for 485 Soldier-Kits pairing the Wingman detector and Pitbull jammer, the largest contract in MyDefence’s history. Around 15 of those systems were field-evaluated by U.S. European Command during exercises in Germany before the broader buy.

The US Department Of Homeland Security Is Using MyDefence Hardware At World Cup Venues

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is working with MyDefence at the World Cup, which kicked off this week across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, to monitor and protect critical infrastructure, public gathering areas, and transportation corridors, according to the company. That work covers tracking both authorized and potentially hostile drone activity around the tournament, as the Financial Times first reported.

This slots into a federal counter-drone effort I have documented piece by piece for more than a year. The $500 million counter-drone program FEMA launched routed $250 million to the 11 U.S. host states and the National Capital Region. The FAA designated every World Cup stadium a No Drone Zone with steep civil penalties and FBI seizure powers. Cities have been spending the grant money fast, from Dallas adding $10.3 million to its Axon contract to the NYPD standing up a $6.5 million counter-drone unit built to outlast the tournament.

The detection and mitigation hardware behind all that funding has to come from somewhere. MyDefence is one of the vendors filling that demand, alongside the radar, RF, and optical players the federal grants are paying for. The roughly 60 trained mitigation officers the FBI is fielding across 11 host cities cannot cover that much airspace without leaning heavily on contracted detection vendors. That reliance is exactly the market MyDefence sells into.

The Sale Reflects A Broader Rush Of Capital Into Counter-Drone Companies

MyDefence is not the only counter-drone asset drawing money right now. The FT reports that Dutch drone-detection maker Robin Radar Systems is working with an adviser to explore a sale at around $2 billion, British defense start-up Cambridge Aerospace is raising fresh funds for interceptor systems, and Mercedes-Benz is set to partner with Munich-based Tytan Technologies to protect European critical infrastructure from hostile drones.

The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East pushed drones and anti-drone equipment to the center of modern warfare. They also exposed the cost imbalance at the heart of the problem: cheap attack aircraft like Iran’s Shahed drones versus expensive air-defense missiles like the U.S.-made Patriot used to shoot them down. That math is what makes radio-frequency detection and jamming attractive. A wearable jammer that defeats a $500 quadcopter without firing a missile changes the unit economics of defense.

Bridgepoint, which raises a new flagship fund of about €7.5 billion, acquired its majority stake in MyDefence in 2024 through the Bridgepoint Development Capital IV fund and has financed production increases and research expansion since. It has also bought related defense businesses, including Comrod, a Norwegian maker of tactical communications and power products. Bridgepoint and MyDefence declined to comment to the FT, and Robin Radar could not immediately be reached.

DroneXL’s Take

There is a clean line from the funding announcements I covered through 2025 and 2026 to this sale process. When the Trump administration set a $500 million ceiling and FEMA pushed $250 million to the host states, that money was always going to land in the hands of detection and mitigation vendors. MyDefence is one of those vendors, and a private equity firm is now reading the same demand signal I have been documenting and deciding it is time to cash out near the top.

What strikes me, having tracked MyDefence specifically since the Oklahoma City opening, is how fast the story moved. Less than two years from a Bridgepoint buyout to a reported billion-dollar auction is venture-style velocity inside a defense-hardware business, and it is being driven by real orders: the $26 million Army contract, the Ukraine deployments, the World Cup work. This is not a hype valuation built on a pitch deck. The revenue exists.

The open question is what kind of owner the auction produces, and it matters more than the price. A strategic buyer like a large defense contractor would fold MyDefence’s wearable kit into a wider product catalog and a U.S. procurement relationship. Another financial buyer would run the same playbook Bridgepoint just ran and look for the next flip in a few years. The FT reports the adviser is preparing for an auction toward the end of the year, so the answer is not abstract. Watch the bidder list when that process opens, because whether frontline counter-drone hardware ends up inside a prime contractor or stays independent will shape how fast this technology reaches the soldiers and security agencies actually using it.

One more thing the reporting did not resolve. The FT did not address whether the World Cup contract work itself factors into the valuation, and the buyers circling MyDefence were not asked. It is worth knowing, because a billion-dollar tag built partly on a 39-day tournament reads differently than one built on standing Army and Ukraine orders that outlast any single event.

Source: Financial Times.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.