Helsing is moving deeper into Europe’s defense technology market after raising €450 million ($487 million) in a Series C financing round led by General Catalyst. The Germany-HQ company plans to use the funding to build out its AI capability and expand from its 300-employee base.
The timing matters. The announcement came as NATO held its annual summit in Washington, D.C., where the Russian invasion of Ukraine was high on the agenda. Helsing is now aiming more directly at European nations bordering Russia, with Estonia as its new starting point.
A Defense AI Company Turns Toward the Baltic Region
Helsing has created a new entity in Estonia and plans to spend €70 million on Baltic defense projects over the next three years. The company already has offices in Munich, London and Paris, but the Estonian move places it closer to the NATO eastern flank it says it wants to help defend.
Helsing builds AI software for defense systems. According to the company, its technology is used to process information from defense systems, boost weapons capabilities in drones and jet fighters, and improve battlefield decisions.
Gundbert Scherf, Helsing’s co-chief executive officer, tied the company’s work directly to Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s full-scale invasion. He said, “Ukraine has used technology for its defense against the full-scale Russian invasion, and I think us being able to help there and deploy our technology and execute the mission we had set out three and a half years ago, to use AI to protect our democracies, has been a big driver for us.”
Why Estonia Is Central to Helsing’s Expansion
Helsing’s move into Estonia is not just about opening another office. In the company’s framing, Estonia is part of a wider line of European countries where defense, technology and deterrence now overlap.
Scherf described Helsing as “a company founded on European values and defending European interests and democracies,” and said that this is happening in Ukraine as well as “on our eastern flank, all the way from Finland, through the Baltics, down to Poland.” He also pointed to Estonia’s technology leadership and the prime minister’s focus on protecting European democracies as reasons the country was “a natural starting point.”
Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, welcomed Helsing’s entrance. In a statement, she said it was “very welcome” and added that “we need actions, not just words.”
Helsing co-CEO Torsten Reil also placed the expansion in the context of Russia’s military spending. He said, “Russia has increased its defense budget to 7% of GDP, to a level where it’s pretty clear that the goal is probably not just Ukraine, but wider.” He added that Helsing feels “a sense of urgency and responsibility” to create a capability gap to deter and, if necessary, defend Europe and the NATO eastern flank.
What Helsing Says Its AI Requires
Helsing’s work depends on compute, but the company is not naming all of its suppliers. Asked where the bulk of its AI compute comes from, the company’s co-CEOs declined to provide details.
Reil said Helsing uses its own compute and that its systems also run on “Edge” devices, where local compute is required. He also pointed to Project Centaur, which Helsing announced a few weeks earlier and which is based on reinforcement learning to create an AI for air combat.
That project, Reil said, requires significant compute because Helsing is spending heavily on training and training agents. He said the company expects to have “extremely high capabilities in air combat” and uses scaled-up compute for that work.
Reil said Helsing has some compute capability of its own and also uses third parties. He said those third parties cannot be named for “security reasons.”
Deals, Investors and the Bigger Defense Tech Market
Helsing says it has already won deals with Airbus SE and defense ministries in Germany and Ukraine. The company also cited the German Eurofighter Electronic Warfare upgrade with strategic investor and committed partner Saab AB, the AI infrastructure for the Future Combat Air System with consortium HIS, and a number of classified contracts in the maritime and land domains.
The new Series C round brings Helsing’s total funding to €769 million. Investors include Prima Materia, the fund set up by Spotify founder Daniel Ek, and Swedish defense supplier Saab AB. The latest round included Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Plural, Greenoaks Capital Management and Elad Gil.
The funding would theoretically value Helsing in the region of €4.95 billion ($5.4 billion), according to a source who spoke to Bloomberg, though Helsing declined to comment on valuation.
Helsing is growing as defense tech becomes a larger target for Western investors. According to a report released last week by PitchBook, Silicon Valley put almost $35 billion into defense tech startups in 2023, and over $9 billion so far this year.
- Western defense budgets are going up, creating an opportunity for founders and investors in the sector.
- A U.S. equivalent to Helsing might be Anduril Industries Inc.
- Few other European defense startups have reached Helsing’s scale, partly because European government defense spending still lags behind that of the U.S.
General Catalyst’s Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, managing director and head of Europe, said in a statement that she has “deep conviction that Helsing is on the path to becoming a global category leader.” She added that, with battlefronts on European soil for the first time in decades, companies like Helsing have “never been more critical.”