Well, if anyone thought 2026 was going to be a chill year, everyone and their mother is out to prove you wrong.
Yesterday, European drone giant Destinus announced that it’s finalized its acquisition of Swiss AI avionics company Daedalean for a cool CHF 180M ($225M).
Destinus said in a statement that Daedalean (say that five times fast) will operate “as a core hub for AI engineering, autonomy research, and advanced perception technologies” within the company, focused on things like comms-denied navigation and perception and seeking for cruise missiles and interceptors.
“Together, we will accelerate the deployment of next-generation autonomous systems across our interceptor, cruise missile, and UAV platforms, while continuing to advance AI technologies that enhance safety and efficiency in civil aviation,” Destinus Founder and CEO Mikhail Kokorich said in a statement.
European drone dominance, here we come.
Eyes on the prize: Daedalean is no teeny tiny startup. The company was founded in Zurich back in 2016 and set out to build safe, reliable AI-powered flight control systems—systems that regulators like the EASA and FAA would actually approve.
And investors have been quite keen on the idea. The company has raised a total of $109.14M in funding from investors including Honeywell Ventures, Carthona Capital and Redalpine Venture Partners, according to Pitchbook data.
They’ve also inked some pretty impressive partnerships, including with:
- Aviation giant Honeywell on “vision based flight control for general aviation and eVTOL” in 2019 (hence the investment).
- Avidyne Corporation on an AI-based avionics platform called PilotEye in 2021.
- Embraer on its Autonomous System project.
- Xwing to “share data, knowledge, and processes in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence” in 2023.
- Leonardo on AI-powered visual awareness and navigation for rotorcraft in 2024 (AI helicopters, here we come).
From the sounds of it, the company-turned-AI-hub will continue this commercial work while also doubling down on defense and Destinus’ smaller UAVs.
- The Daedalean team’s main focus will include “navigation for contested environments, advanced perception and seeker technologies for interceptors, cruise missiles, and one-way effectors, as well as mission planning and autonomous decision-making for high-speed defense platforms,” according to Destinus.
- The hub will also work on swarming and “sensor fusion with onboard AI reasoning.”
FWIW, the planned acquisition of Daedalean by Destinus was first announced back in August.
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Up in the air: Destinus itself is one of those companies where once you start looking, you realize they’re everywhere.
The company was founded in 2021 by Kokorich, Alex Danyliuk, Tim Moser, and Alex Wicks and is headquartered in the Netherlands, with operations in Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, the UK, and Ukraine.
They started out in the whole hydrogen and hypersonic flight game, then pivoted hard into drones.
To date, they’ve built a few different flavors of UAVs, including:
- Ruta: A cruise missile-like drone that can carry out everything from ISR to strike. These are deployed in Ukraine.
- Hornet: A smaller missile-shaped UAV/interceptor that comes in three configurations—“Hunter,” “Stalker,” or ”Plotter”—and can do everything from surveillance to interception.
- Lord: A low-cost cargo, ISR, and strike drone.
And investors are going for the Destinus hype—according to Pitchbook, they’ve raised a total of $409.74M (a mix of debt and equity) at a $1.76B valuation.
- In November, they also inked a partnership with Shield AI to build Hivemind onto Destinus’ platforms. (Curious how the Shield X Daedalean plug-in will work.)
- They also acquired Dutch UAV company Aerialtronics back in March.
Dare we say we might be entering the age of the European neoprime?