Helsing, a Munich-based defense company focused on creating artificial intelligence-based military solutions and components, has secured over $490 million from a Series C financing round it initiated to raise funds for product research and development. U.S.-based venture capital firm General Catalyst led the funding round, with Elad Gil, Accel, Saab, Lightspeed, Plural and Greenoaks as participants.
Jeannette zu Furstenberg, managing director at General Catalyst, expressed a firm belief in Helsing growing as a “global category leader,” seeing the company’s high sense of urgency to provide European democracies with AI-based defense solutions.
“As we witness battlefronts on European soil for the first time in decades, we believe the role of companies like Helsing has never been more critical,” she said.
Founded in 2021, the company has been active in Ukraine since 2022, establishing the Defence Manufacturers Alliance, a joint effort with Kyiv, as one of its initiatives.
Among the most recent defense projects to tap Helsing’s technologies is the German Eurofighter Electronic Warfare upgrade, which was secured through Saab.
Airbus Defence and Space also signed a partnership agreement with Helsing in June to develop AI technologies for the Wingman platform, an unmanned fighter-type aircraft being developed for Germany.