Europe—well, Germany especially—is having a heck of a year.
This morning, the German defense tech juggernaut announced it’s raised a $1.8B Series E at an $18B valuation, setting a new record for Europe’s largest defense startup funding round after Quantum Systems’ $1.2B raise earlier this month.
- New investors, including JPMorgan Chase, Dragoneer Investment Group, Disruptive, Iconiq, and the growth equity arm of Goldman Sachs Alternatives, participated in the round, alongside Helsing’s existing backers General Catalyst, Plural, Lightspeed, and others.
- Despite the who’s who of American investors, Helsing said it “remains predominantly European-owned, underscoring its deep roots in Europe.”
The Germans are taking this whole rearmament thing pretty seriously, huh?
Helsing? Hell Yeah: By now, Helsing is a household name in the defense tech world. The company, founded in 2021 by game developer Torsten Reil, former German defense official Gundbert Scherf, and machine learning engineer Niklas Köhler, has rolled out an ever-growing list of technologies, including:
- Altra: An AI-powered C2 backbone that plugs into artillery, ISR drones, and strike systems to stitch battlefield data into a live target map.
- HX‑2: A strike drone with a 62-mile range that is jam-resistant/EW-immune and swarm-capable when paired with Altra. They’ve won some serious contracts for HX-2, including a €300M one with the German military (alongside STARK) last October.
- CA-1 Europa: A Collaborative Combat Aircraft-esque autonomous fighter jet concept, which they’re working to have in the air by 2027 and operational within four years.
- Area 9: A robotics-focused research division that’s kind of like Skunk Works, but make it European. It’s building Helsing’s first robotic platform, a robot dog called RX-1, with plans for more.
Big bucks: Helsing’s raised a shit-ton of cash from high-profile investors, and even after their last round, a $691M Series D at a nearly $14B valuation, there were questions about whether they could bring in enough revenue to justify those numbers.
Since then, they’ve worked to put those questions to bed. On top of the €300M contract for HX-2 drones, the German military is reportedly preparing to award Helsing with a €580M contract to develop a core software-and-test architecture for the Combat Fighter System Nucleus, “a national system linking combat aircraft, drones, satellites and sensors,” per Politico.
If Helsing wins that contract and continues to win others, these mega-rounds make a whole lot of sense (we sense an IPO on the horizon). If they don’t, expect another price hike for Spotify subscriptions from Helsing co-chairman and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. At this rate, we’re betting on the former.