Hellsing co-CEO and co-founder Torsten Ryle, who previously sold the company to Zynga for $500 million, aims to provide an AI backbone for military applications.
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The Munich-based company is raising at least $400 million in a funding round led by General Catalyst, sources told Forbes.
by David Jeans, Ian Martin and Kenrick Kai forbes staff
Hellsing, a secretive AI company that has contracts with European militaries, is in talks to raise as much as $4 billion, sources said. forbesThe deal will make the company one of the most valuable defense technology startups in the world.
The deal is a Series C funding round led by General Catalyst and is expected to provide the Munich-based company with at least $400 million, according to four people familiar with the matter. The deal comes less than a year after Hellsing raised more than $200 million in a funding round also led by General Catalyst, bringing its total raised to more than $750 million.
Helsing and General Catalyst did not respond to requests for comment.
The funding round marks another big bet on the burgeoning defense tech ecosystem and the largest investment in a European defense tech company. As wars in the Middle East and Ukraine continue and tensions rise between the U.S. and China, venture capitalists are seeking to cash in on companies that advance Western national security interests, and over the past five years they have poured $100 billion into companies that contract with the Department of Defense, according to Pitchbook.
Founded in 2021 by a team of engineers, technology executives and consultants, Hellsing raised about $2 million from European investors to start the company, but in November of the same year, Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s It gained significant momentum after an investment firm backed the company’s series. Funding round of over $100 million. “Europe has a huge opportunity to lead in building dynamic AI systems in an ethical, transparent, and responsible manner,” Ek told TechCrunch at the time. “The entire Hellsing team takes this responsibility seriously and is driven by the same values.”
Helsing’s founders, co-CEOs Torsten Reil and Gundbert Scherf, and president Niklas Köhler, have remained quiet about what the company is making, but unlike larger defense startups like Anduril, which are focused on hardware products and weapons, Helsing appears primarily focused on building a software suite to power military AI capabilities.
Last year, the company signed a contract with Saab to provide the German military with AI-powered tools to assist Eurofighter jet fighter pilots. A few months later, Hellsing was selected as the vendor to provide AI capabilities to the Future Combat Air System, a multilateral agreement between France, Germany, and Spain to develop a new air defense system. And in February, Hellsing signed a non-binding agreement with the Ukrainian government to provide AI capabilities to drones and UAVs.
The company’s largest backer, General Catalyst, has emerged as a major investor in defense technology, making early investments in defense unicorns Anduril and Applied Intuition, as well as secretive AI company Vannevar Labs. Under its Global Resilience fund, led by veteran investor Paul Kwan, the firm joins other big names like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz in backing companies that aim to sell to the military. “We believe defense spending on software will grow from a single-digit percentage to a double-digit percentage over the next decade,” Kwan co-authored a General Catalyst blog post announcing Hellsing’s last funding round, adding that software-enabled defense technology companies “are a game changer for governments.”
