Weekly Digest: Auterion raising $200M at $1.2B valuation, Uforce’s unicorn debut, and Anthropic’s Pentagon standoff

Good afternoon from the team at Resilience Media

Drones that cost $25,000 should not be shot down with $1M Tomahawk missiles. This is the lesson from Ukraine, and is now what we’re seeing as the US-Israeli assault on Iran continues. In modern warfare, startup technology is the equaliser. Should the Straight of Hormuz be patrolled by hugely expensive warships to protect shipping from drone attacks? The display of Western military might in Iran just shows Russia how vulnerable NATO is against the technological and manufacturing lessons it has learned in Ukraine. The countries dragged into war in the Middle East are all turning to Ukraine for help in defending against the Shaheds that have rained down in Kyiv every night for years. Future wars will be tech wars.

This is reflected in the investment pouring into defence tech startups, which is covered in our Deals section below. After breaking the news that Frankenburg Technologies was raising, we have a scoop about drone swarm company, Auterion. The company led by Lorenz Meier is said to be raising its Series C soon, valuing it at $1B, even as it has cash in the bank and contracts in the bag. Read an excerpt from Ingrid Lunden’s piece below.

More in Deals: Uforce is out of stealth and into the unicorn club, seeing Lakestar, Shield Capital, and Ballistic Capital in the round. Got a tip about upcoming investment? Send it our way.

As governments navigate their relationships with frontier technology companies, things can get ugly. Reporter Carly Page and Ingrid Lunden analyse what the Department of Defense, Anthropic, and OpenAI debacle means for AI startups, governments, and contracts. You can read an excerpt in the Analysis section below.

Elsewhere on Resilience Media:

Resilience Conference Warsaw

We are thrilled to announce another round of speakers for Resilience Conference Warsaw: Former Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, General Rajmund T. Andrzejczak; OTB Ventures Partner, Marcin Hejka; TYTAN Technologies Co-Founder & CEO, Balázs Nagy; and PFR Ventures Board Member Rozalia Urbanek. Tickets are already going fast, so get yours today before Early Bird prices end.

I’ll be back in your inboxes next week. Thanks for reading.

-Leslie Hitchcock, co-founder and Publisher, Resilience Media

Auterion, the drone software startup, eyes raising $200M at a $1.2B+ valuation

Ingrid Lunden, Managing Editor

German defence tech startups are seeing a lot of activity at the moment, and one of them is using that momentum to raise funds. Resilience Media has learned from multiple sources that Auterion — the startup co-headquartered in Munich and Arlington, VA that builds software systems for kinetic and other autonomous drones — is profitable and is looking at raising $200 million at a valuation of more than $1.2 billion to continue growing its business.

The defence technology market is very heated at the moment globally, with the war in Ukraine lighting a fire of activity across Europe in particular. That is leading to some major contracts such as the deals that Stark and Helsing are securing with the German government, as well as fundraising activity, with some $8.7 billion raised by European defence and resilience tech startups in 2025.

Multiple sources said that Auterion’s fundraise would likely come out of inbound interest, similar to its last round, based on the fact that it is seeing a lot of business traction.

“They are really humming right now,” said one source close to the company. The timeframe for fundraising is not specific but is understood to be within this year.

We understand that Auterion is already profitable and is currently on track to double revenues based on signed contracts this year to $200 million — the same as what they are looking to raise.

A spokesperson for Auterion responded to a request for comment to say that “in light of the success of the development and growth of the business there has been increased interest from potential and new investors.” He added that it is “not fundraising at the moment.” This lines up with what our sources said.

Read on here.

Anthropic, OpenAI, and the new rules of Defence AI

Carly Page, Reporter and Ingrid Lunden, Managing Editor

Anthropic is facing the prospect of being frozen out of US government work after refusing to relax safeguards on how its AI can be used by the newly rebranded Department of War – a clash that has bigger ramifications for it, OpenAI and other foundational model companies globally as AI becomes more pervasive on the modern battlefield.

The dispute, which escalated publicly last week, centres on Anthropic’s refusal to amend contract language to allow what the DoW describes as “any lawful purpose” use of its models.

The company says its Claude system is already deployed inside classified government networks, supporting intelligence analysis, operational planning, and cyber tasks. But what it will not do, Anthropic said, is strip out protections that prohibit using Claude for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.

Not content with arch-rival Anthropic basking in ethical sunlight, OpenAI wasted no time wading into the story.

Before we go any further, it’s important to note that the standoff is largely theoretical at this point. The contract would be a framework for future services, and we have seen how even some of the biggest IT deals, covering far more mature technology than AI, can get scrapped and never make it out of the negotiating room.

Still, the conversations have implications and highlight some of the tensions inherent in how AI and defence intersect – which they are doing more and more everyday. And so, the story is already reverberating beyond Washington.