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E 767 — Unicorn Atlas #1: Helsing — Europe's $18 Billion Defence AI Bet · Deep Tech Germany – AI, Robotics & Frontier Innovation by Startuprad.io™

0:00
Speaker0: On the 13th of July, 2026, a defense startup that did not exist five years ago,
0:07
Speaker0: closed the largest venture round in European defense tech history,
0:13
Speaker0: $1.8 billion, $18,
0:19
Speaker0: billion post-money valuation, larger in a single raise than most European defense
0:26
Speaker0: primes make in a year of profit.
0:29
Speaker0: This company sells kamikaze drones to Ukraine and now to Berlin.
0:35
Speaker0: It says it's predominantly European owned.
0:40
Speaker0: Its two biggest new investors are American.
0:44
Speaker0: This is the first Unicorn Atlas entry. This is Helsing.
0:59
Speaker0: Hello and welcome everybody. This is episode 767 of StartupRate.io recorded
1:07
Speaker0: by me, Jörn Manninger, aka Joe from Startup Radio, from Frankfurter Main, Germany.
1:13
Speaker0: And this is the first entry in a new series here on the channel.
1:17
Speaker0: We call it the Unicorn Atlas. It will mostly be blog posts, but occasionally
1:22
Speaker0: we also use the opportunity to introduce you to audio and video to a new unicorn,
1:30
Speaker0: to an existing unicorn, or to one that,
1:33
Speaker0: maybe even failed. We'll see.
1:36
Speaker0: Every entry in the Unicorn Atlas takes one European unicorn and does what most
1:42
Speaker0: coverage of those companies does not do.
1:46
Speaker0: It asks who owns them, what they actually make, what is the product, why they are so valued,
1:53
Speaker0: whether the numbers behind the headlines hold up, and what they mean for the
1:58
Speaker0: European operator, investor, and policymaker who has to make decisions about
2:04
Speaker0: the world these companies,
2:06
Speaker0: are building.
2:08
Speaker0: Unicorn Atlas number one, Helsing,
2:12
Speaker0: Europe's most valuable pure play defense tech company, also on paper Germany's
2:18
Speaker0: most valuable unicorn startup, the one,
2:22
Speaker0: European defense industry conversation now has to root through.
2:27
Speaker0: And as of the 13th of July, an 18 billion dollar business on paper.
2:36
Speaker0: Over the next roughly half hour, I'm going to walk you through what the Series E actually is, who put,
2:43
Speaker0: in the money, what housing actually makes, where the money is going,
2:47
Speaker0: what the Bundeswehr framework contract really means, why Ukraine matters more
2:53
Speaker0: than most Western coverage admit,
2:55
Speaker0: and most importantly, where the valuation stops being a bet on capability and
3:01
Speaker0: starts being a bet on wartime.
3:04
Speaker0: Let's go!
3:08
Speaker0: On Monday the 13th of July 2026 Helsing announced that it had closed a Series E round of 1.8,
3:19
Speaker0: billion US dollars at an 18 billion dollar post-money valuation.
3:24
Speaker0: Defense News confirmed the same number. The German DPA, Deutsche Presse Agentur,
3:29
Speaker0: German Press Agency were confirmed the same number.
3:33
Speaker0: There is no ambiguity on the headline.
3:36
Speaker0: Here is what makes it interesting. CRSD was one year earlier,
3:40
Speaker0: in June 2025, 600 million euros at 12 billion euro post money.
3:49
Speaker0: Prima Materia, Daniel Elk's investment vehicle, the Spotify founder,
3:55
Speaker0: led it. 12 months later, the valuation has gone from 12 billion euros to 18 billion dollars.
4:03
Speaker0: Call it roughly 16 and a half billion euros.
4:06
Speaker0: That is 15% up on a company that was already the most valuable defense startup in Europe.
4:14
Speaker0: For context, 15% up in 12 months.
4:19
Speaker0: At this scale, on a company that publishes no revenue figures,
4:24
Speaker0: is not the shape of a growth stage round.
4:27
Speaker0: It is the shape of a scarcity trade.
4:30
Speaker0: There is exactly one European pure-play defense AI unicorn
4:34
Speaker0: of Helsing size and product breadth, and every institution that decided in 2024
4:40
Speaker0: or 2025 that European defense was a real thematic allocation,
4:45
Speaker0: now has one target to buy in.
4:47
Speaker0: That is how you get 18 billion. Now here's the first thing that most coverage
4:52
Speaker0: got wrong and here is where I want to start being useful.
4:56
Speaker0: In May 2026 several outlets reported that Helsing was closing a 1.2 billion
5:05
Speaker0: dollar round led by Dragonair and Lightspeed.
5:10
Speaker0: Some of you read those reports you may have wondered whether the July race was
5:17
Speaker0: the second round on top of that it was not
5:21
Speaker0: the May reporting and July close are the same event the May headline was the anchor tranche
5:27
Speaker0: of what became series E the July announcement is the same round after final
5:33
Speaker0: syndication expanded the ticket to $1.8 billion.
5:37
Speaker0: There is no separate $1.2 billion round.
5:41
Speaker0: There is one Series E closed at 13th of July at $1.8 billion US dollars.
5:47
Speaker0: Anyone building a housing timeline should merge those two lines into one.
5:53
Speaker0: On to who puts in the money, because this is where the interesting European
5:57
Speaker0: sovereignty question sits.
6:00
Speaker0: Lead Investor, Dragoneer Investment, American, based in San Francisco,
6:06
Speaker0: Co-led Lightspeed Ventures, American, based in Mandelau Park.
6:10
Speaker0: Other participants in the syndicate, per the official press release and Reuters
6:16
Speaker0: coverage, Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, JPMorgan Chase, CPP Investment,
6:22
Speaker0: that is Canadian National Pension Plan,
6:25
Speaker0: General Catalyst, Iconic Plural Stepstone, Disruptive Ventures.
6:30
Speaker0: Existing anchors Prima Materia, Excel, Green Oaks remain shareholders.
6:36
Speaker0: Whether they participated in the Series E as new capital was not publicly disclosed.
6:43
Speaker0: Helsing itself uses the language predominantly European-owned,
6:48
Speaker0: which is a careful phrase.
6:51
Speaker0: It does not say the round was European-led.
6:54
Speaker0: It says the cap table, the accumulated ownership from Series A onwards remains majority European.
7:02
Speaker0: Both statements can be true. Because when you do the arithmetic, $1.8 billion,
7:09
Speaker0: going in at $18 billion post money implies that the newly issued shares represent
7:15
Speaker0: roughly about 10% of the company.
7:18
Speaker0: Existing shareholders are diluted by roughly 10%. So if before CSE the cap table was, say.
7:27
Speaker0: 95% European after Series E, it's roughly 86% European.
7:35
Speaker0: The company can still fairly claim predominantly European owned,
7:41
Speaker0: while the marginal new capital, the incremental power, sits in San Francisco, New York and Toronto.
7:48
Speaker0: I want to be careful here. One number you may have seen that existing chain
7:53
Speaker0: holders retain 80-85% of the company post Series E, does not hold up to the arithmetic.
8:01
Speaker0: If you inject 1.8 billion at an 18 billion post money, the incoming investors get 10%, not 15 to 20.
8:09
Speaker0: Existing shareholders keep roughly 90% of the equity minus whatever option pool
8:16
Speaker0: refresh happened, which is not disclosed.
8:19
Speaker0: The public math points to roughly 10% delusion.
8:22
Speaker0: Anyone quoting a bigger number is either double counting a secondary or extrapolating from CRSD.
8:29
Speaker0: It is worth flagging because this misreading is now traveling in some coverage.
8:34
Speaker0: The important political point is Europe just built its flagship defense tech
8:39
Speaker0: unicorn on American and Canadian institutional money.
8:42
Speaker0: That is not automatically bad. Pension funds money is patience,
8:46
Speaker0: well-priced and structural.
8:48
Speaker0: But it does mean when European ministers describe Helsing as an emblem of European
8:53
Speaker0: strategic autonomy, the equity behind the emblem
8:57
Speaker0: was underwritten by non-European institutions taking a bet on the European defense spending surge.
9:04
Speaker0: That is the kind of nuance the Unicorn Atlas is here to hold.
9:08
Speaker0: Not to condemn it, to name it.
9:12
Speaker0: Onto what Helsing actually is. Three founders, Munich Orangen, founded 2021.
9:20
Speaker0: Converted from a GmbH, a German LTD, to an SE, the European,
9:27
Speaker0: company legal form in 2025, which is itself a signal about a company preparing
9:34
Speaker0: for cross-border European growth.
9:36
Speaker0: Thorsten Reil, co-CEO, his previous company was Natural Motion,
9:41
Speaker0: the games and animation tech startup behind CSR,
9:46
Speaker0: Racing, sold to Cigna, in 2014 for around 527 million US dollars.
9:55
Speaker0: That is why Daniel Ek, who has known Rael since the games area,
10:00
Speaker0: was the first serious institutional check into Helsing in 2021.
10:04
Speaker0: That is not a defense industry pedigree, that is consumer tech pedigree that
10:10
Speaker0: pivoted into defense and is not worth naming because it changes how you should
10:16
Speaker0: read Helsing culturally.
10:19
Speaker0: Helsing behaves more like a US style hyperscale defense startup than like a European prime.
10:27
Speaker0: Gunbert Scherf, Co-CEO, ex-Bundeswehr, ex-Defense Intelligence,
10:33
Speaker0: worked on defense procurement and AI-adjacent programs inside the German security establishment.
10:40
Speaker0: He is the interior of the Bundeswehr Rolodex.
10:43
Speaker0: He is why the Bundeswehr framework contracts happen as fast as it did.
10:48
Speaker0: He is the German establishment site of the founder table. Dr.
10:53
Speaker0: Niklas Köhler, President and Chief product officer, machine learning engineer,
10:58
Speaker0: founded an AI startup called Hellsicht that was folded into Hellsing.
11:05
Speaker0: He is now the technical face.
11:08
Speaker0: Now to the product taxonomy. This is where the 18 billion US dollar defense
11:13
Speaker0: tech question actually gets real.
11:16
Speaker0: Hellsing does five things. 1.
11:19
Speaker0: HX2, a loitering munition. Call it a kamikaze drone if that is easier.
11:25
Speaker0: Roughly 100 km range, AI-powered target recognition, designed to be resistant to electronic warfare.
11:35
Speaker0: In serial production at the Munich Resilience Factory at over 1,000 units per month.
11:41
Speaker0: That is the product paying the bills. 2.
11:45
Speaker0: Ultra, the mission command software layer. This is the actual AI product.
11:52
Speaker0: Fuser sensor data generates target assignments, coordinates drone swarms and
11:58
Speaker0: critically can operate in GPS denied environments, for example where Russian
12:04
Speaker0: jamming has knocked out satellite navigation.
12:07
Speaker0: If you strip housing to one durable mode it is ultra everything else is a container for ultra three,
12:17
Speaker0: CA-1 Europa, an unnamed AI fighter jet concept, prototype unveiled in 2025,
12:26
Speaker0: first flight planned around 2027.
12:31
Speaker0: This is the moonshot. This is the storyline that justifies the $18 billion valuation. 4.
12:38
Speaker0: SG-1 Fathom, an autonomous underwater glider, long endurance underwater surveillance
12:46
Speaker0: prototype tested in 2025, zero production in Plymouth, UK.
12:52
Speaker0: This is the maritime bed and it is the one European naives are quietly interesting in.
13:00
Speaker0: 5. A range of adjacent programs.
13:04
Speaker0: The Centaura Unnamed Escort Concept, the KIRA Electronic Warfare Anti-Submarine
13:10
Speaker0: Program, where public disclosure is still thin.
13:15
Speaker0: Behind those five, there's a corporate manufacturing stack, Grob Aircraft for
13:20
Speaker0: Composite Airframes, Blue Ocean Marine Tech for underwater vehicles, which we will get into.
13:28
Speaker0: And there is a partner stack OHB and Kongspark and Hensoldt in space,
13:38
Speaker0: Jurenko in warheads, Eurenko, sorry for the pronunciation, Instalaza in tactical air to ground munition.
13:50
Speaker0: That is the company. Now let's follow the money.
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Speaker0: Helsing's own press release says the Series E Capital is going into three things.
14:01
Speaker0: One, integration of new AI platforms into partner nation defense systems.
14:07
Speaker0: Two, expansion of the production footprint, the so-called resilience factor.
14:12
Speaker0: Three, the CA1 Europa Unmanned Fighter Program.
14:19
Speaker0: Let's translate that into observable facts.
14:24
Speaker0: The first resilient factory sits in the Munich area and produces over 1000 HX2 units per month.
14:32
Speaker0: The company has publicly said its ambition is to reach millions of units per
14:38
Speaker0: year across the network.
14:39
Speaker0: The second facility is in Plymouth in the United Kingdom
14:44
Speaker0: tied to a 350 million pound joint investment
14:50
Speaker0: package announced with the UK government focused on both the HX2,
14:57
Speaker0: and the Fathom underwater collider.
15:00
Speaker0: The third, and this is one that changes the geopolitics, is in Princeton versus
15:05
Speaker0: Virginia in the United States.
15:08
Speaker0: Housing is opening a resilience factory on U.S. soil that was announced as part
15:13
Speaker0: of the Series E press cycle.
15:16
Speaker0: This is actually not a small decision. That is, Helsing saying it wants to sell into U.S.
15:22
Speaker0: Defense market, competing directly with companies like Undruly and Shield AI
15:29
Speaker0: on their home turf with local production for reasons that are much more regulatory
15:35
Speaker0: than they are logistical.
15:37
Speaker0: US defense procurement heavily favors domestic manufacture.
15:41
Speaker0: A European unicorn opening an American factory to sell to the Pentagon is a
15:46
Speaker0: story you would have called improbable in 2021.
15:51
Speaker0: On ca1 europa first flight is targeted around 2027
15:58
Speaker0: that is roughly 18 months from now if it flies the 18 billion valuation looks conservative
16:05
Speaker0: if it slips two or three years which is the base rate for military aviation
16:11
Speaker0: programs at any company including the primes the run may math
16:15
Speaker0: may change fast,
16:18
Speaker0: This is the money, now the contract that everyone talks about.
16:22
Speaker0: In February 2026, the German Bundestag approved defense procurement vehicles,
16:28
Speaker0: the so-called 25 million Euro a piece Vorlage.
16:34
Speaker0: Authorized framework contracts for two loitering ammunition supplies to the
16:39
Speaker0: Bundeswehr Helsing with the HX2
16:43
Speaker0: and Stark, the other German defense tech startup, with a virtuous drone.
16:48
Speaker0: The Helsing framework up to 4,300 HX2 units, framework ceiling roughly 1.4 billion euros.
16:59
Speaker0: The stock framework, 2,200 virtuous units, framework ceiling,
17:05
Speaker0: roughly 2.86 billion euros.
17:10
Speaker0: Those are the numbers you've seen quoted. Here is what most coverage does not say clearly.
17:16
Speaker0: A framework contract in German defense procurement is a ceiling, not a commitment.
17:21
Speaker0: It is the maximum the German military, the Bundeswehr, may spend against the
17:27
Speaker0: supplier over the contract's lifetime if it chooses to.
17:31
Speaker0: The actual money that flows is triggered by call-off orders,
17:37
Speaker0: or abrufe, each of which has to be individually approved and budgeted.
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Speaker0: The first Bundeswehr call-off from Helsing framework was reported at approximately
17:50
Speaker0: 270 million, with an M, euros, not 1.46 billion.
17:57
Speaker0: 270 million. The rest is optionality.
18:02
Speaker0: It is the option to spend up to that ceiling,
18:06
Speaker0: an option that will get exercise or not depending on how the Zeit & Wende defense spending.
18:14
Speaker0: Posture holds up under future coalitions, future budgets and future assessment
18:19
Speaker0: of the Russian threat trajectory.
18:22
Speaker0: I want to be direct about why this matters. If you read the financial press
18:27
Speaker0: and see Bundeswehr signs 1.46 billion contract with Helsing,
18:32
Speaker0: and you build a revenue model on that number, you're modeling optionality as revenue.
18:39
Speaker0: When Helsing values itself at 18 billion, part of that valuation is a bet,
18:44
Speaker0: that this optionality gets exercised at close to 100%.
18:49
Speaker0: This, that is possible, but it's not guaranteed.
18:53
Speaker0: And it's the single most important asymmetry an investor evaluating this company should hold in mind.
18:59
Speaker0: The Ukraine side of Helsing's revenue equitation is more specific. That is where we go next.
19:06
Speaker0: Since 2022, Helsing has been supplying Ukraine, not as a side project,
19:13
Speaker0: as the operational reality on which the entire product credibility of the HX2 is built.
19:20
Speaker0: By early 2026, Helsing has publicly.
19:26
Speaker0: Claimed several hundred HX2 units delivered per month to Ukraine forces.
19:34
Speaker0: Defense Network, a German language defense industry outlet, reported that in
19:39
Speaker0: the winter of 2025 to 2026 alone, over 1,000 HX2 units were delivered to Ukraine.
19:49
Speaker0: The Ukraine armed forces have used them in what Helping calls logistic lockdown
19:54
Speaker0: operations, hitting Russian rear area supply.
19:58
Speaker0: Ukrainian commanders are also embedded in Helsing's product development loop.
20:03
Speaker0: The Ajax 2 is iterated in something close to real time based on field feedback.
20:10
Speaker0: For a defense tech company, this is genuinely unusual. Most defense primes iterate
20:17
Speaker0: on multi-year procurement cycles.
20:19
Speaker0: Helsing is iterating in weekly loops in a live war with a customer who tells
20:25
Speaker0: them exactly what does and does not work.
20:29
Speaker0: That is the mode that money cannot buy. And this is the single most important
20:33
Speaker0: piece of Helsing's product credibility.
20:37
Speaker0: But, and this is where the report to financial caution I want to bake into every
20:42
Speaker0: Unicorn Atlas entry has to enter.
20:46
Speaker0: The operational picture is not uniformly positive. In January 2026,
20:51
Speaker0: Bloomberg reported that early German Army Ajax-2 test flights had failed.
20:57
Speaker0: Systems were failing to arm properly, navigation modules were reported missing,
21:03
Speaker0: and initial reorder cycles were paused pending resolutions.
21:07
Speaker0: Helsing publicly disputed these reports and cited near 100% hit rates on its own operational data.
21:16
Speaker0: I do not have a way sitting in
21:17
Speaker0: Frankfurt with public sources to arbitrate between Bloomberg and Helsing.
21:22
Speaker0: What I can tell you is this, both things can be true.
21:27
Speaker0: Loitering munitions of this class are notoriously difficult to operationalize
21:34
Speaker0: outside their proving ground.
21:37
Speaker0: The HX2 was hardened by Ukraine on Ukraine terrain against Russian jamming patterns.
21:45
Speaker0: When you take that product and drop it into German army field exercises in Central
21:49
Speaker0: European terrain, some fraction of it does not port cleanly.
21:54
Speaker0: This is not a scandal. That is the normal operational reality of taking a battle-hardened
22:00
Speaker0: product and standardizing it across a NATO customer base.
22:05
Speaker0: The question the unicorn asked us has to hold and the question the operator
22:11
Speaker0: investor and policymaker listening to this episode has to hold is whether helsing's engineering,
22:16
Speaker0: can converge those two performance regimes fast enough that the bundeswehr confidence
22:23
Speaker0: stays intact through the framework's contract
22:26
Speaker0: call-off cycle right now the answer is probably not certainly here is where
22:32
Speaker0: helsing gets more interesting than a single product story.
22:36
Speaker0: Over the last 18 months Helsing has been building through acquisitions,
22:41
Speaker0: joint ventures and MOUs something that looks like a sovereign European defense tech supplier stack.
22:49
Speaker0: Let me talk you through it. Grob Aircraft, acquired June 2025,
22:56
Speaker0: located in Tussenhausen, Bavaria,
22:59
Speaker0: roughly 275 employees, historically a maker of training aircraft and composite airframes.
23:07
Speaker0: Helsing bought them for one reason, composite manufacturing capability for airframes.
23:12
Speaker0: This is the industrial base under the CA1 Europa.
23:17
Speaker0: Plu Ocean Marine Tech acquired May 2026 roughly 120 employees,
23:24
Speaker0: UAV, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Engineering.
23:30
Speaker0: This is in the industrial base under the SG-1 Fathom and the broader maritime program.
23:37
Speaker0: KERC joint venture announced May 2026 with OBH in Germany, Koenigsberg in Norway,
23:46
Speaker0: and Hänsoldt in Germany.
23:48
Speaker0: Purpose Tactical ISR Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance Satellite Constellation.
23:56
Speaker0: This is Helsing telling European governments you do not need to depend on Maxar
24:01
Speaker0: or Starlink for battlefield satellite imagery.
24:04
Speaker0: We a European consortium will build the sovereign alternative.
24:10
Speaker0: Eurenco. Eurenco French warhead manufacturer MOU You signed June 2026 purpose,
24:19
Speaker0: European sovereign explosive payloads for HX2.
24:23
Speaker0: This matters because it lets Helsing tell customers their HX2 warheads are not subject to.
24:32
Speaker0: USITAR, the American export control regimes that has reportedly become a political
24:38
Speaker0: constraint for European defense exports.
24:42
Speaker0: INSTALAZA, Spanish technical munitions supplier ongoing corporation on air to ground weapons.
24:50
Speaker0: And sorry for butchering our company names.
24:53
Speaker0: If you stack those partnerships up, you can see the shape of the bed.
24:57
Speaker0: Helping it not just building products.
25:00
Speaker0: It is building a European defense tech ecosystem around itself in which it sits at the center.
25:07
Speaker0: That is exactly the new prime playbook. Andruly has been running in the US since 2020.
25:14
Speaker0: And that is where the 18 billion valuation stops being outrageous.
25:18
Speaker0: Let me put Helsing in its competitive frame because this is the question every
25:23
Speaker0: serious observer of European defense tech is asking.
25:28
Speaker0: Andruly, in the US, most recent valuation on public records was around 14 billion
25:35
Speaker0: dollars in 2023, likely higher now.
25:39
Speaker0: Shield AI, US, valued in the low billions.
25:43
Speaker0: Palantir, US publicly traded, market cap north of 30 billion.
25:49
Speaker0: But Palantir is more of a data analytic prime than a hardware startup.
25:55
Speaker0: So the comparison is too loose.
25:57
Speaker0: Rebellion Defense in the UK, smaller and quieter.
26:01
Speaker0: On the European side, Stark, valued in the low single digit billions of euros,
26:06
Speaker0: mainly on the Virtus program.
26:10
Speaker0: ICIYE, the Finnish synthetic aperture satellite company above 2 billion euros.
26:19
Speaker0: Harmattan ai in france earlier stage,
26:23
Speaker0: helsing at 18 billion dollars is the largest of these and the question is is that a bubble,
26:30
Speaker0: here's my honest read in pure defense of tech unit economics cost per drone
26:36
Speaker0: margins per system revenue predictability of framework contracts no at 18 billion
26:41
Speaker0: helsing is not obviously trading on today's fundamentals
26:45
Speaker0: helsing does not publish revenue if helsing's revenue in,
26:49
Speaker0: 2026 were hypothetically in the 400 million euros to 700 million euro range
26:56
Speaker0: range i'm inferring from a german call-off in the ukraine delivery flow
27:01
Speaker0: and the emerging us and uk contracts then 18 billion is somewhere between 25 and 40 times revenue.
27:11
Speaker0: Well, you know, as a multiplier for the hardware heavy defense business, this is expensive.
27:17
Speaker0: But the new prime thesis is not a revenue multiple bet.
27:22
Speaker0: It's a bet that European defense spending search site and vendor. We are in Europe.
27:27
Speaker0: The 2% GDP NATO floor becoming a 3% floor in some countries creates a 15 to 20,
27:36
Speaker0: year demand curve that Helsing is best positioned to capture in software-defined domains
27:42
Speaker0: if that thesis is right 18 billion is a floor not a ceiling if this is wrong
27:48
Speaker0: if European defense spending peaks in 2028 and rolls back 18 billion is a overshot,
27:55
Speaker0: I do not know which of these is right neither honestly do the American investors
28:01
Speaker0: who led this round what they are pricing is optionality on the first scenario.
28:08
Speaker0: This is what you see.
28:11
Speaker0: At series e a scarcity market you pay for the option act nine ownership governance
28:18
Speaker0: and a predominantly european question,
28:21
Speaker0: let me come back to the ownership question because this it is,
28:25
Speaker0: the piece of the story that european coverage has been softest on the two lead
28:30
Speaker0: investors dragoneer and lightspeed are american goldman sachs growth equity
28:35
Speaker0: jp morgan chase cpp american american Canadian.
28:39
Speaker0: These are institutions with fiduciary duties to delimit partners and their pension beneficiaries.
28:46
Speaker0: It's not the European strategic autonomy their duty is to return.
28:51
Speaker0: That does not mean these investors are hostile to European interest.
28:56
Speaker0: It simply means government's interests are their own.
29:00
Speaker0: And in a company that is now the flagship European Defence Tech Unicorn,
29:05
Speaker0: That is a governing question that European policy makers and the German government
29:09
Speaker0: should be, and I suspect are, asking privately.
29:15
Speaker0: Helsing says the cap table remains majority European. That is likely true.
29:20
Speaker0: What is also true is that when you compound roughly 10% dilution rounds
29:26
Speaker0: like this one over the next two or three years, because Helsing will raise again
29:30
Speaker0: if the CA1 Europa program is capital intense, the European majority steadily thins.
29:38
Speaker0: There is a version of the story in which Helsing goes public in 2028 or 2029
29:43
Speaker0: and is listed on a US exchange because that is where the liquidity is.
29:48
Speaker0: There is a version in which Helsing acquires or is acquired by a US prime.
29:53
Speaker0: There is a version in which the SE structure gets structured for tax and regulatory
29:58
Speaker0: reasons that shift decisions authority.
30:01
Speaker0: None of these outcomes is imminent. All of them are on the range of scenarios
30:07
Speaker0: that a European policy maker looking at this round should be modeling.
30:11
Speaker0: And that is the third thing the UNICORN Atlas is here to name.
30:17
Speaker0: Not to editorialize, to make sure the question is not skipped.
30:25
Speaker0: Let us give you our little verdict. Let me try to compare everything I have
30:30
Speaker0: just said into a verdict, because the Unicorn Atlas has to close with one.
30:35
Speaker0: Helsing is a real company. It has three products operating in a real war.
30:39
Speaker0: It has a real Bundeswehr framework contract in which the first real call-off
30:44
Speaker0: has already been signed.
30:45
Speaker0: It has a real acquisition and partnership stack that looks like the beginning
30:49
Speaker0: of a European defense tech ecosystem.
30:52
Speaker0: It has three founders who between them combine consumer tech scaling experience,
30:58
Speaker0: German defense establishment credibility and machine learning depth.
31:03
Speaker0: That is not a fake company. That is not a wartime marketing exercise. That is a real business.
31:11
Speaker0: Helsing is also a company prized on optionality. Optionality on the Bundeswehr
31:16
Speaker0: framework being exercised close to its ceiling.
31:19
Speaker0: Optionality on CA1 Europa flying Optionality on Ukraine remaining a proving
31:27
Speaker0: ground long enough for the HX2 to accumulate the kill data that justifies the software mode,
31:34
Speaker0: Optionality on the European defense spending surge lasting 15 years Optionality
31:40
Speaker0: on the American-led syndicate's willingness to support future rounds,
31:44
Speaker0: If most of those options are exercised favorably 18 billion looks conservative.
31:51
Speaker0: If two or three of them break unfavorably, 18 billion looks like a wartime peak.
31:58
Speaker0: My verdict is this, housing is a real thing. It is also the most exposed to
32:02
Speaker0: political and operational risk of any European unicorn currently on the market.
32:08
Speaker0: That is not a contradiction. That is the specific character of a defense tech
32:13
Speaker0: unicorn born in the middle of a European rearmament cycle.
32:17
Speaker0: The question the operator, the investor and the policymaker listening to this
32:21
Speaker0: episode should be asking is not, is housing overvalued?
32:24
Speaker0: And it is, am I comfortable with which of these optionalities I'm underwriting
32:31
Speaker0: when I engage with this company?
32:34
Speaker0: For the operator, Ajax 2 is a real product. Ultra is the mode.
32:40
Speaker0: Take those seriously. Take the CA1 Europa story as future value,
32:45
Speaker0: not as present capability.
32:47
Speaker0: For the investor, watch the second and third Bundeswehr call-offs against the framework. work.
32:52
Speaker0: Watch the West Virginia factory first US contract.
32:57
Speaker0: Watch the CA1 timeline slippage. Those three data points will tell you whether
33:02
Speaker0: the 18 billion valuation is holding.
33:04
Speaker0: For the policymakers, the predominantly European-owned phrase is doing a lot of work.
33:10
Speaker0: Ask harder questions about future dilution, exit venues, and governance rights
33:15
Speaker0: of the American co-leads.
33:17
Speaker0: This is the flagship of a strategic sector, its Ownership Org is a matter of
33:22
Speaker0: European industrial policy.
33:24
Speaker0: That is the first entry in the Unicorn Atlas.
33:28
Speaker0: If you found this useful, please
33:30
Speaker0: rate and review Startup Radio wherever you're watching or listening.
33:34
Speaker0: The companion blog post with the useful data tables, the funding timeline,
33:38
Speaker0: the founder dossiers, the resilience factory, geography, and the full source
33:42
Speaker0: list is on our blog startuprate.io forward slash blog.
33:46
Speaker0: There's also a linked reading list in our recent Europe coverage.
33:51
Speaker0: The June 2026 startup news episode on the defense capital supercycle,
33:56
Speaker0: our earlier piece on European structural recovery, our German VC episode,
34:02
Speaker0: episode 762 on why stability is not strength,
34:06
Speaker0: and episode 764 on the German AI bottleneck.
34:10
Speaker0: Next entry in the unicorn atlas will be European unicorn with headlines valuation
34:15
Speaker0: and the underlying business need to be pulled apart carefully stripped,
34:20
Speaker0: subscribe on YouTube Apple podcast Spotify and wherever you find your audio
34:26
Speaker0: and I will see you in the next one this has been your manninger see you soon.