The Munich defense startup Helsing announced a new round of financing on Monday: the company raised 1.8 billion dollars (1.6 billion euros) in fresh capital from international venture capital investors. This brings the valuation to $18 billion. Just a year ago, the company was valued at $12 billion. How did it happen so quickly?
Helsing is suddenly one of the most valuable private defense companies in the world and is leaving established German defense companies such as Hensoldt and Renk behind in terms of market capitalization. Even a corporate giant like Volkswagen is valued at just twice as high on the capital market. In terms of company value, only Rheinmetall and Airbus are in a higher league in the industry in Germany, even though Helsing was only founded a good five years ago.
Bet on AI
The new investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, JPMorganChase, CPP Investments and Stepstone, are already treating the company like a future European defense company. They are betting on a fundamental change in the defense industry. In the future, the bet goes, software, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems will become more important than classic platforms such as fighter jets or tanks. They are convinced that Europe needs its own technology group for this. Helsing tries to take on this role.
Read too
Helsing started in 2021 as a software provider for artificial intelligence in existing weapon systems. The official self-description in 2023 was that AI-based capabilities were being developed and that “the speed of software development cycles” was being brought to armaments.
Connect software and hardware
This was followed by orders for electronic warfare in the Eurofighter and the FCAS air combat system. The founders Gundbert Scherf, Torsten Reil and Niklas Köhler recognized early on that the European defense industry was fundamentally changing, that procurement cycles were becoming shorter and money was flowing more quickly. But artificial intelligence alone is not enough, because large procurement programs usually arise around specific weapon systems.
The drone war in Ukraine presented an opportunity to combine software and hardware. Helsing therefore began to develop its own drone platforms. The change in strategy is reminiscent of its American competitor Anduril, which also initially started as a software company and later began to develop its own drones, sensors and weapon systems based on commercially available electronic components in order to save development time.
Speed of development as a unique selling point
In quick succession, the company presented its own combat drone, the HX2, later systems for underwater reconnaissance, AI pilots for fighter jets together with the Swedish arms company Saab, and most recently the unmanned combat aircraft CA-1 Europa for electronic warfare. No other European defense company has expanded its portfolio so much in such a short time. To achieve this, Helsing also relied on vertical integration and bought the Bavarian aviation specialist Grob Aircraft around 2025 in order to quickly gather know-how.
Many of the announced systems are still in development. It is difficult to judge from the outside how far they actually are. The most recently reported sales from the 2024 financial year of the German subsidiary Helsing GmbH amounted to 26.9 million euros. Even though the company has since secured some large orders for its HX-2 drone, the current valuation can hardly be explained by existing business.
Expectations not yet fulfilled
In the industry, Helsing’s communication is considered unusually self-confident. An initially widely announced collaboration with Rheinmetall ended in July 2025, and both companies then went their separate ways. Insiders at Airbus indicated to WELT at the end of 2025 that Helsing’s input for electronic warfare in the Eurofighter “had yet to take place”. Its critics consider Helsing to be a company that communicates its technological maturity early on, thereby raising expectations that only have to be fully fulfilled years later.
Investors see this as exactly the difference to the classic European arms industry. Don’t first develop and then sell, but rather acquire customers and capital early on and then further develop the products together with the armed forces. They pay for the prospect of future billion-dollar orders and a dominant role in AI-supported weapon systems. The decisive factor is the pace of development, which Helsing is currently demonstrating.
Just a year ago, the Munich-based company came under fire for its attack drones in Ukraine because Ukrainian soldiers questioned their performance. The system is now seen as an example of how quickly software can develop in war. According to the company, in the US exercise “Flytrap 5”, which simulated Ukraine’s electronic warfare, the HX2 hit its target in 15 of 17 test flights despite massive jamming signals.
Test field Ukraine
When reconnaissance drones from a US manufacturer failed under the electronic interference, US soldiers quickly used the HX2 to search for targets. According to the industry, this leap in development was made possible by the close exchange between European start-ups and Ukraine. New software is sometimes tested and improved there every two weeks directly under combat conditions – an innovation rhythm that traditional armaments programs have so far rarely achieved.
A network that hardly any other defense start-up in Europe can boast also contributes to Helsing’s success. Founder Gundbert Scherf worked as a consultant in the Federal Ministry of Defense and was involved in issues relating to the modernization of the Bundeswehr under Ursula von der Leyen. He was previously a consultant at McKinsey.
Airbus and Spotify in the background
Torsten Reil initially made a name for himself as an entrepreneur in the field of artificial intelligence and computer games. Former Airbus boss Tom Enders and Spotify founder Daniel Ek, two of the most influential personalities in the European technology and defense industry, sit on the board of directors.
Instead of addressing the military as a procurer of individual weapon systems, Helsing has positioned itself from the outset on a political level as a strategic partner for the digitalization of European armed forces. Helsing sells a strategic vision of how Europe’s armed forces should fight in the future and develops the appropriate systems in parallel. The model here is also the US competitor Anduril with its founder Palmer Luckey, who is politically well connected in the USA.
Key European armament company
However, the valuation of 18 billion dollars cannot be explained solely by the previous successes of HX2 and the founders’ network. With the fresh capital, the pressure of expectations grows. So far, Helsing has shown that the company can announce new products at high speed and develop them quickly under the conditions of the Ukrainian war. Now Helsing must bring its AI to more and more platforms, from combat drones to electronic warfare to underwater vehicles, satellites and autonomous combat aircraft.
At $18 billion, investors have already valued Helsing as one of the future key players in the European defense industry. The next few years will decide whether the startup can handle industrial series programs and billion-dollar procurement orders from Western militaries.
This article was created for the business competence center of Gründerszene, WELT and Business Insider.
WELT business editor Benedict Fuest regularly reports on the AI race, technology and armaments.
