Helsing, Europe’s $18 Billion Bet on AI at War

Helsing is Europe’s answer to the defense-tech surge, an AI company valued at $18 billion that has gone from writing battlefield software to building strike drones by the thousand, underwater gliders, and its own combat aircraft, in five years flat. Founded in Munich and chaired by Spotify’s Daniel Ek, it is the continent’s bet that software-first rearmament need not be imported from California.

Helsing at a glance

From software to strike drones

Helsing launched as a pure software house, AI that fuses sensor data and sharpens electronic warfare, and its first fame came from upgrading Eurofighter EW and partnering with Saab to put learning software inside Gripen E’s radar. Ukraine changed the company’s shape: contracts for 4,000 HF-1 and 6,000 HX-2 strike drones turned the algorithm shop into a munitions manufacturer almost overnight, with resilience, GPS-denied navigation, jam-tolerance, as the software signature inside the airframes, a category race covered in our loitering-munitions guide.

The product sprawl, air, sea, code

Flagship partnerships and contracts

The order book is anchored in Berlin and Kyiv: Germany’s roughly €580 million Combat Fighter System Nucleus award makes Helsing architect of the Luftwaffe’s future combat-AI core, while Ukraine’s drone buys provide the combat feedback loop every rival envies. Partnerships stack Airbus’s Wingman, the European drone-wingman push, Mistral AI’s models, Loft Orbital satellites and ARX’s ground robots atop the Saab axis, sketching Helsing’s ambition plainly: to be the AI layer across every European domain, the position Anduril occupies in America.

Resilience factories, the industrial idea

Helsing’s manufacturing concept borrows from the war it supplies: ‘resilience factories’ are deliberately distributed, software-defined production cells across Europe, sized to surge strike-drone output near the customer rather than concentrate it in one targetable campus. The company has announced sites from Germany toward the eastern flank, with partners’ plants federated in. It is the opposite of Anduril’s Arsenal-1 hyperscale bet, many small lines versus one giant one, and which philosophy survives contact with real wartime demand is one of the decade’s more consequential industrial experiments.

The skeptics’ file

The bear case is documented: 2025 reporting relayed insider complaints of overpriced drones and immature software, Ukrainian frontline reviews of early batches were mixed, and an 18-billion-dollar tag on a 900-person company prices in European procurement moving at startup speed, historically a brave assumption. The company’s answer is compounding contracts and factories; the test is whether CA-1 flies in 2027 and whether drone performance reviews from the front improve batch over batch. Europe’s defense-tech credibility, not just one firm’s, rides on the outcome.

Frequently asked questions

What does Helsing make?

Battlefield AI software plus HX-2 and HF-1 strike drones, the SG-1 underwater glider and the CA-1 Europa autonomous jet in development.

How much is Helsing worth?

$18 billion after its July 2026 round, Europe’s most valuable defense startup.

Who founded Helsing?

Torsten Reil, Gundbert Scherf and Niklas Kohler in 2021, with Daniel Ek as chairman and early backer.

Is Helsing profitable?

Unknown; it is private, publishes no financials, and reporting has questioned margins on early drone batches.

How is Helsing different from Anduril?

Same software-first thesis, European anchor customers and consortium style versus Anduril’s vertically integrated American model.