Helsing, a fast-rising European defence tech startup, just pulled off one of the largest private funding rounds in European history: a €600 million Series D and the implications for the future of war, autonomy, and sovereignty in Europe are massive.
Led by Prima Materia, the investment firm founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, this round cements Helsing’s place as Europe’s most well-funded AI defence company. Other returning power players include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel, Plural, General Catalyst, and Saab. New backing from BDT & MSD Partners signals that Helsing’s mission has global relevance and real momentum.
The startup building the brains of the European battlefield
While American defence tech gets most of the attention, Helsing has quietly become the AI nerve center for European military modernisation.
Founded in 2021 by Torsten Reil, Dr. Gundbert Scherf, and Niklas Kohler, Helsing’s software is designed to do something revolutionary: interpret live battlefield data in real time. By fusing inputs from multiple sensors, drones, and surveillance systems, its AI helps commanders make faster, sharper decisions without relying on outdated or foreign tech stacks.
And Helsing’s ambitions aren’t just digital. In 2024, the company moved into hardware with the launch of its HX-2 drone system, signaling a leap into all-domain defence a concept that combines AI, cyber, air, land, sea, and space systems into one coordinated ecosystem.
Europe’s sovereignty tech moment is here
What’s driving all this? One word: sovereignty. “There is an urgent need for investments in advanced technologies that ensure Europe’s strategic autonomy,” said Daniel Ek, who now also serves as Helsing’s chairman.
“Helsing is uniquely positioned to deliver these capabilities.”
Against a backdrop of rising geopolitical instability, EU nations are ramping up defence budgets but many are still dependent on American or non-European contractors for cutting-edge systems. Helsing’s pitch is simple: Europe can’t afford to outsource its security.
With teams across Germany, France, and the UK, Helsing is embedding itself directly into the decision-making and development pipelines of allied militaries.
€600M: more than a funding round, it’s a signal
The size of this round is staggering on its own. But the timing is just as crucial.
Despite a slowdown in global venture capital, European defence and dual-use tech raised a record-breaking $5.2 billion in 2024, according to the NATO Innovation Fund. As legacy defence contractors struggle to modernize, a new generation of startups like Helsing is racing to build faster, smarter, more scalable solutions from the ground up.
This €600 million injection will allow Helsing to:
- Scale its AI and autonomy R&D
- Deepen software-hardware integration
- Hire across its European hubs
- Accelerate full-stack, all-domain defence tech
While valuation figures weren’t disclosed, Helsing’s last known valuation in 2023 was ~€5 billion, a number that likely saw a significant bump with this round.
Well, this isn’t about militarism, it’s about modernisation. Helsing represents a new wave of defence startups that believe democratic societies can and should build their own scalable, ethical, and precise military technologies.
And as conflicts continue to play out in Ukraine, the Middle East, and along Europe’s borders, the ability to act fast—independently—has never felt more urgent.
