Matija Milenovic is Co-Founder and CEO of Hop Aero (YC S26), a defense aerospace startup building hypersonic rocket cargo vehicles for delivery to contested environments, backed by Y Combinator.

Matija holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from University College Dublin and an MS in Aerospace Engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

A 2x startup founder and aerospace systems engineer, Matija was recognized as one of ten winners of the prestigious 200 kSEK entrepreneurship scholarship in Sweden and has deep expertise in electric propulsion, systems architecture, and spacecraft design.

Prior to Hop Aero, Matija was CEO of porkchop, a Stockholm-based electric propulsion startup that launched on SpaceX Transporter-3, built a $400M+ sales pipeline, and sold its IP; he also served as Systems Engineer at Destinus, leading a 20+ person team on a supersonic UAV.

Hop Aero has raised $3M pre-seed and won a $1.25M SBIR grant from the US Air Force, with a mission to give the US and its allies an asymmetric strategic advantage in contested logistics.