AI Startup Helsing Raising Funds At $4 Billion Valuation, A Major Bet On Defense Tech

The Munich-based company is raising at least $400 million in a funding round led by General Catalyst, sources tell Forbes.

_{By David Jeans, Iain Martin and Kenrick Cai Forbes Staff}

Helsing, the secretive AI company that has secured contracts with European militaries, is in talks to raise funding that would value it in the range of $4 billion, sources told Forbes, a deal that would make it one of the world’s most valuable defense tech startups.

The deal, a Series C funding round being led by General Catalyst, is expected to provide the Munich-based company with at least $400 million, according to four sources familiar with the matter. The deal comes less than a year after Helsing raised more than $200 million in a funding round also led by General Catalyst, and would bring its total funding to more than $750 million.

Helsing and General Catalyst did not respond to comment requests.

The funding round is another major bet on the fast-growing defense tech ecosystem, and marks the largest investment in a European defense tech company. With ongoing wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and rising tensions between the U.S. and China, venture investors have been searching for payoffs in companies that boost the West’s national security interests; in the past five years, they’ve poured $100 billion into companies that contract with the defense department, according to Pitchbook.

Helsing, which was founded in 2021 by a team of engineers, tech executives and consultants, raised around $2 million from European investors to seed the company, but gained major traction in November of that year when Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s investment firm backed the company’s Series A funding round of more than $100 million. “Europe has a tremendous opportunity to lead in building dynamic AI systems in an ethical, transparent, and responsible manner,” Ek told TechCrunch at the time. “The entire Helsing team take this responsibility seriously and are driven by the same values.”

Helsing’s founders, co-CEOs Torsten Reil and Gundbert Scherf and president Niklas Köhler, have been cagey about what the company is making. But unlike major defense startups like Anduril, which focuses on hardware products and weapons, Helsing appears largely focused on building a software suite to prop up military AI capabilities.

Last year the company secured a contract alongside Saab to provide the German military with AI-powered tools to assist the Eurofighter jet fighter pilots. Months later, Helsing was selected as a vendor to provide AI capabilities for the Future Combat Air System, a multinational agreement between France, Germany and Spain to develop a new fighter jet and drones. And in February, Helsing signed a non-binding agreement with the Ukrainian government to provide AI capabilities for drones and UAVs.

Its biggest backer, General Catalyst, has emerged as a major defense tech investor, writing early checks for defense unicorns Anduril and Applied Intuition, and the secretive AI company Vannevar Labs. Under a “Global Resilience” fund led by veteran investor Paul Kwan,the firm has joined other major firms like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz in boosting companies trying to sell to the military. “We believe that defense spending on software will grow from single digit percentages to double digits over the next decade,” Kwan wrote in a General Catalyst blog post he co-authored announcing Helsing’s last funding round, adding that software-enabled defense tech companies will be “a game changer for governments.”