Defense Tech Gets A Boost from Daniel Ek

Daniel Ek, who lives mainly in Stockholm, has led a 600m EUR (Series D) round of investment in defense tech firm Helsing, a four year old Munich based company, through his investment firm Prima Materia.  Other investors in this round include already-invested firms like Lightspeed Ventures, Accel, Plural, General Catalyst and SAAB.  New investors were BDT and MSD Partners.

Daniel has previously spoken on the importance of defense spending to ensure Europe's "strategic autonomy" in response to geopolitical changes.

 

Helsing is currently valued at 12 billion EUR according to a Financial Times article.  Total YTD investment in Helsing stands at 1.37 billion EUR.

In the defense technology space, this funding follows a funding of US giant Anduril which raised 2.5 billion USD led by Founders Fund whose Partners include Peter Thiel of Paypal and Palantir fame, and Trae Stephens of Anduril, an early employee of Palantir with a background in computational linguistics.

Helsing started as an AI software company taking data from military sensors and radars to build real-intelligence for the battlefield. However, it is taking its taking technology expertise to branch out into new area like unmanned mini-submarines.