Helsing's Defense AI Triumph: EU Record $223M Funding

0:00Helsing, which is the European startup specializing in defense AI technology, has secured another 209 million pounds, or I guess euros sorry, which is about 223 million dollars, which is about 223 million, which is a country, which is the European. investor. So this follows the startup's previous 102 million euro round, which was backed heavily by Daniel Eek, who is founder of Spotify. If you don't know, I recommend following him on X, you know, formerly Twitter. He's got some good takes on stuff. So I see his stuff pop up from time to time. In any case, the financial injection, I think really could catapult Helsing to a top tier of both European AI and defense technology companies.

0:56So for context, France's minstrel AI recently closed$113 million seed round at a valuation of$260 million. So Helsing's latest valuation metrics are certainly in another league. The pre-money valuation was around 1.5 billion euros with the latest funding propelling that number to over 1.7 billion. So in 2021, Daniel Eck really kind of pledged, I think, a billion dollars or a billion euros. Sorry, going back and forth between the euro and U.S. dollar conversions is tripping me up a little bit. But yeah, anyways, he pledged a billion euros, 1.2 billion dollars of his personal wealth to invest in groundbreaking technological endeavors, which he termed were, quote, moonshot projects.

1:40This is actually kind of cool, right? We see a lot of big tech people playing it safe with their money. I mean, you look at like Jeff Bezos and, you know, no hate to Mr. Bezos, but I see he spends a lot of time on his mega yachts, which like if I was him, come on, like there's gotta be better things you could invest in or feel like you could contribute to society than your mega yachts. But I guess like maybe people will call me a hater because it's his money. He could spend it however he wants, which I totally subscribe to that. You know, but like, I don't know, this seems cool to me that this, that, you know, Daniel's going to spend a billion dollars on moonshot projects, which obviously are interesting and exciting.

2:18They're groundbreaking technological endeavors. Meanwhile, you got Mr. Bezos, who's like, you know, spending a billion dollars on his super yachts and, you know, taking apart historical bridges in order to get them under. I don't think that ended up happening, but there's a whole debacle a while ago if you saw it. In any case, there's also like a bunch of, sorry, I know I'm going on a tangent, but there's like a bunch of VCs I listen to. If you listen to the All In podcast, you got Jason Calacanis, who's, you know, he's on that and he always talks about how he thinks Jeff Bezos is going to run for president.

2:48If Jeff Bezos is listening and you would like to run for president, come on, do something cool like work on some of these moonshot projects or feel like you contribute more than living on your mega yacht. I know a lot of people hate Elon Musk for a lot of reasons. Personally, I think he's doing some incredible stuff. I know he gets a lot of hate, but one thing you definitely have to credit him for is he sold all of his mansions, he sold all of his stuff, and he literally just lives in whatever company he's working at, doing whatever he believes in. So he's obviously done some great things for the environment and for everything else with Tesla and everything else that he's working on.

3:23So, you know, you got to give him some credit in the sense that he's not currently living on a mega yacht, which maybe it's just a phase for Mr. Bezos. So I guess I'll stop throwing him some shade and maybe he'll look at something more exciting and interesting for the rest of us. If not, then I guess he'll just sail off into the sunset. In any case, back to the topic at hand, I think operating through his investment firm, which is Prima Materia, Ek, so Daniel, right? He initially infused Helsing with 100 million euros and the startup's AI platform aims to enhance defense and national security measures specifically tailored for liberal democracies by making them more efficient through real-time data.

4:03So, you know, you can definitely see there's a very real world use case in this today um when we're seeing russia invading ukraine and the whole everything going down there i think uh europe in general is a lot more aware of and i think daniel comes from sweden if i'm not mistaken um and so i think europe right now is a lot more aware and kind of cognizant of defense and the importance of investing in defense tech it's kind of interesting i know there's like this whole um there's a whole thing here in the US where it's like this controversial thing. A lot of tech companies are like, we're not working with defense companies.

4:36It's like, yeah, okay, well, let's just theoretically say China invaded America. I'm pretty sure all of these major tech companies would just decide, okay, I guess we can work on, you know, tech stuff. Otherwise it'd seem quite, I don't know, traitorous or something. I don't know. So I know there's a whole thing there, but whatever. I think it's definitely necessary. If you live in a good democratic country and you believe in democratic ideals, you'd probably want the best and brightest in your country to support technological endeavors to protect your country. But in any case, again, I digress.

5:11So anyways, I think the startups AI platform kind of aims to enhance a bunch of different defense measures. Helsing has also been making inroads by making a bunch of relations with various European governments. So this June, the German government selected the company in conjunction with SAAB to implement AI-enabled electronic warfare capabilities for the Eurofighter jet. So more recently, Helsing and its consortium partners secured the contract to serve as the AI backbone for the future combat air system. That's the FCAS program. So the startup has been significantly active in Ukraine since 2022 through though i think a lot of details of their involvement remain undisclosed it's probably all confidential right now but torson real who's the co-founder of helsing stated quote this funding round is a vote of confidence in europe general catalyst commitment to global and european resilience is a perfect fit for our mission to help protect our democracy so grundberg scherf who is another co-founder of helsing um kind of elaborated on the the company's philosophy and said, quote, we founded Helsing because we believe the AI will be essential so that democracies can continue to defend their values.

6:22Our recent traction shows that this belief is shared by governments and industry. So I think Helsing's preceding series A was also noteworthy and was led by Prima Materia, which is, of course, Daniel Elk's company. So commenting on the series B round, Daniel Ek, who serves as co-chairman of Helsing, mentioned, quote, this investment from General catalyst and investment and strategic partnerships with Saab Defense reaffirms Helsing as the primary AI platform partner out of Europe. So I think the new financing really marks another milestone for Helsing and is positioning it not only as a startup to watch, but also as a growing force in the realm of AI and defense technology.

7:02We've seen a couple big companies come out of the US, so it's very interesting to see some coming out of other areas as well. Definitely a company we'll be following in the future.