This morning, European defense company Helsing announced a twofer from the AI action summit in Paris:
- The company is teaming up with Loft Orbital to deploy a multi-sensor satellite constellation to “deliver real-time intelligence and situational awareness to European defense and security stakeholders” everywhere from borders to the battlefield.
- Helsing is also partnering with LLM developer Mistral AI to “jointly develop next-generation AI systems for the defense of Europe.”
Not bad for a Monday.
Drones for democracy: Helsing was founded in Germany in 2021 by Gundbert Scherf, Niklas Köhler, and Torsten Reil, as AI and nontraditional defense companies across the pond were on the rise. The AI software company said it aimed to “help protect our democratic values and open societies,” and has said it will only sell to democratic countries.
Helsing’s flagship AI software analyzes huge amounts of real-time data collected from drones, sensors, and other surveillance assets, to help operators—mostly European—make real-time decisions. In other words, it tells them where to strike.
Late last year, Helsing also unveiled its first piece of hardware: a tiny HX-2 strike drone, which it says was battle-tested in Ukraine. Germany ordered 4,000 of the “mini-Taurus” drones to be sent to Kyiv.
Big data energy: The two new partnerships will work hand-in-hand to make Helsing’s software produce better results. Helsing and Loft Orbital’s satellite constellation will feature onboard AI processing and a “comprehensive suite” of cutting-edge surveillance tech, including multiple cameras and radio-frequency sensors. This means that the satellites will be able to collect and analyze data in real-time, on-orbit.
Helsing says that the insights provided by the satellite constellation will aid fast-moving, critical missions on Earth, including border surveillance, troop movement tracking, and infrastructure protection.
The partnership with Mistral AI, in turn, will enable Helsing to even more effectively analyze the data that its sensors, drones, and satellites collect. In particular, Helsing says it will work with Mistral to develop Vision-Language-Action models, or LLMs that can understand both visual and natural language inputs.
The right timing: Helsing’s Europe-first approach comes as Trump has threatened to pull away from its allies on the continent. Trump has long called for European countries in NATO to increase their defense spending and has said he would not come to their defense—as required by NATO’s charter—if they didn’t. “Europe needs to assert its strength as a geopolitical actor, and AI leadership is the key to that strength and Europe’s future security and prosperity,” Gundbert Scherf, co-founder of Helsing, said in the Mistral AI partnership statement.