Helsing raises €450m for European defence AI
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German defence software developer Helsing has raised €450m to boost its AI projects.
The funding for Helsing will be used for product development and R&D with a particular focus will be on capabilities to secure European sovereignty including protecting the NATO ‘Eastern Flank’ of Estonia and Lithuania.
The Series C funding round for Berlin-based Helsing was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Elad Gil, Accel, Saab, Lightspeed, Plural and Greenoaks.
“European security is at a crossroads and Helsing will play a significant role in giving democratic societies the ability to deter and defend. But speed is of the essence. This new funding round allows us to further up the tempo and invest in large-scale R&D and capabilities across all domains,” said the company’s three founders Niklas Köhler, Torsten Reil and Gundbert Scherf
Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, MD and Head of Europe at General Catalyst, adds: “Since its inception, we have been able to watch the Helsing team execute with a great sense of urgency to build AI-based defense capabilities for European democracies. I have deep conviction that Helsing is on the path to becoming a global category leader. As we witness battlefronts on European soil for the first time in decades, we believe the role of companies like Helsing has never been more critical.”
Helsing has been active in Ukraine since 2022 and recently established the Defence Manufacturers Alliance, a joint initiative with the Ukrainian government. Since its founding in 2021, the company has secured a series of government contracts, including the German Eurofighter Electronic Warfare upgrade (with strategic investor and committed partner Saab AB), the AI infrastructure for the Future Combat Air System (FCAS, with consortium HIS), and a number of classified contracts in the maritime and land domain.
The funding comes as the company successfully deployed advanced AI capabilities on YAM-6, a satellite node part of Loft Orbital space infrastructure. The extended tests focus on real-time onboard radio frequency signal detection and their characterisation enabling upcoming military grade Signal Intelligence and Cognitive Anti-Jamming applications.
“In the past three months we have demonstrated that AI can be deployed rapidly and safely on in-orbit satellites, providing immediate and significant capability gains. Our focus now is to scale those capabilities and make them available to more European armed forces and governments.” said Marc Fontaine CEO of Helsing France.
“We’re very excited to see operational use cases deployed on our space infrastructure. We started Loft with the goal to make it simple for customers to deploy applications on an infrastructure, the same way applications can be deployed on a cloud infrastructure. It is clear that we are at an inflection point where the future holds unbounded capabilities and opportunities, powered by the combination of AI applications and space infrastructure.”, said Pierre-Damien Vaujour, CEO of Loft Orbital.
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