The Europeans are really having quite the week over here in defense tech land.
Earlier this week, autonomy hotshot Auterion announced that it’s won a contract from the German government to provide “thousands of mid-range, heavy AI-guided autonomous strike systems” built with Ukrainian drone company Airlogix to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The systems—specifically, Airlogix’s X and Delta-Wing GOR UAVs, loaded with Auterion’s software—will be produced by the two companies’ joint venture (Auterion Airlogix Joint Venture GmbH), and will start rolling off the line in Germany this year. This contract marks “the largest German production order for heavy autonomous strike drones to date,” according to the company.
“For Auterion, this is a landmark serial‑production contract: it is Germany’s first major funding package for heavy, AI‑guided strike drones produced in Germany for Ukraine,” an Auterion spokesperson told Tectonic via email. “[It brings] Ukrainian battle‑proven designs into a German factory and [deepens] the security partnership, while validating Auterion’s autonomy stack as core infrastructure for European deep‑strike capabilities.”
Brainy: We’ve actually covered Auterion a bunch lately—mostly because it’s been loading its software onto a whole heck of a lot of go-zoom-and-boom tech.
The company was founded in Zurich by Lorenz Meier back in 2017. They don’t make drones themselves—rather, they build the swarming and autonomy software that makes drones tick, including:
- AuterionOS: A battle-hardened autonomous flight control system. This is the base for all of their tech—and the secret sauce that has won them so much investment.
- Skynode: Compact hardware modules that run AuterionOS and enable things like autonomy and mission execution. Basically, they can take any drone and make it autonomous and jamming-resistant.
- Nemyx: Auterion’s swarming software, which enables multi-drone coordination and mission planning, even in contested environments.
Proving ground: And they haven’t just had success in Germany.
- Last summer, the company was contracted to send 33,000 drone “strike kits” (Skynode) to Ukraine under a $50M contract.
- They are also part of DIU’s Project Artemis, working to build long-range strike drones.
- Earlier this month, they also demo’d successful integration for long-range strike with UK firm MGI Engineering.
Auterion has also been, like, ultra-popular with investors—last September, the company raised a $130M Series B led by Bessemer Ventures, bringing total funding to $167.5M, according to Pitchbook data.
Tried and true: Airlogix, for its part, is a dyed-in-the-wool, battle-tested Ukrainian drone startup.
The company was founded to build cargo drones back in 2020, but pivoted to strike drones after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.
- Their flagship drone is a high-flying ISR platform called GOR, which comes in a few different flavors—Delta-Wing for extended range, X is hardened and scaled for production.
- GOR is super-useful for things like reconnaissance, artillery spotting, and target acquisition.
- It’s got a wingspan of about 2.6 meters, can fly for about four hours, and has a max range of about 260km (40-100km tactical comms range).
- It’s also—like all things in Ukraine—built to survive jamming and can do fun things like frequency hopping.
- The drones are already used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and the company can produce more than 500 of them a year.
Holding hands: Auterion and Airlogix officially formed the joint venture—Auterion Airlogix Joint Venture GmbH—back in February at the Munich Security Conference, promising to “produce AI-guided UAVs for Ukraine and NATO allies.”
This is the first contract scored by the German-Ukrainian team up, according to the spokesperson, and “is part of Germany’s military support package for Ukraine and is financed under that framework.”