Biiiiig day for collabs. This morning, Germany-based defense tech giant Helsing announced that it’s teaming up with ground autonomy company ARX Robotics to “develop an AI-based reconnaissance and strike network for European defence.”
The two companies say they will cooperate in Ukraine, as well as on projects in the UK, Germany, and other European countries.
“ARX is leading the field in unmanned ground systems,” Helsing co-CEO Gundbert Scherf said in a statement, “By strengthening the land domain together, we are delivering on Helsing’s promise: to protect European democracies through technological superiority.”
On the ground: As the company with slightly fewer headlines in recent weeks (looking at you, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard), let’s kick things off with ARX. The German unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) startup was founded in 2021 by former members of the German Armed Forces with a pretty simple mission: as vets, they wanted to keep service members out of harm’s way.
Luckily, UGVs are a pretty good way of doing that—the rugged unmanned vehicles can carry out high-risk missions (including medical evacs, resupply, surveillance, and even attacks) in the nastiest of battlefield environments without putting humans in danger.
The company’s flagship product is a UGV called Gereon, which looks a lot like a mini robot-tank and comes in a few different flavors:
- The OG model, designed for everything from frontline logistics to surveillance, which can carry a payload of 500kg, with top speeds of about 30km/hr and a range of 40 km.
- Combat Gereon, released last month, which is battle-hardened and has integrated weapons systems.
They’ve also developed an operating system (OS) called Mithra that can both control a legacy fleet and digitize legacy systems.
Show me the money: The company has been pretty popular with investors and governments alike.
ARX raised a €31M ($36.2M) Series A led by HV Capital, Omnes Capital, NATO Innovation Fund, and Project A back in April. Then they scored an additional €11M ($12.86M) Series A extension in July, bringing the round to $42M. Love buzzer beater.
Plus, their tech is actually being used. ARX vehicles have been deployed with six European armed forces—including Germany and the UK—and Germany sent 30 Gereons to be used on the battlefield in Ukraine. For the most part, they were used for medical evacuation and mine clearance.
Let’s be friends: This new team-up with Helsing isn’t ARX’s first partnership rodeo, either. The company has inked agreements with a whole range of companies—primes and startups alike—to scale production across Europe.
- Quantum Systems, to merge the company’s UGVs with Quantum’s aerial systems.
- UXS Alliance, an alliance of European drone companies that ARX helped bring together into one coalition.
- RENK Group, an old-school German drivetrain producer, which should help scale production of ARX’s UGVs across the continent.
- Daimler Truck, to digitize legacy military trucks using Mithra OS.
- Elistair, to combine tethered drones with their UGVs for surveillance.
- They also worked with Ukrainian company Frontline and Slovenian Valhalla Turrets to build out Combat Gereon.
Buddy buddy: Helsing, meanwhile, has its own impressive slate of friends in high places. The company has teamed up with lots of heavy-hitters, including:
- Rheinmetall to integrate Helsing AI into existing weapons systems
- Mistral AI to co-develop Vision–Language–Action AI models
- Airbus to develop the AI-driven “Wingman” system for FCAS.
- Saab, which made a €75 million investment for a 5% stake in Helsing and has integrated Helsing’s AI on Saab’s platforms.
Helsing and ARX put the goal of this latest partnership in pretty lofty terms: they’re aiming to fully digitize the land domain. “The land domain, which is still highly fragmented and analogue, is to be digitised, networked, and equipped with artificial intelligence (AI),” the companies said in their joint statement, “This will enable armed forces to act faster, more precisely, more efficiently, and at a greater distance in combat situations than they can today.”
To do so, they say they’ll lean heavily on learnings from the battlefield in Ukraine, where both companies’ tech is already deployed. Rise of the robots, here we come.