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Good afternoon from the team at Resilience Media.
Yesterday we published The 100 Startups To Watch in 2026. It took six weeks of research, vetting, and writing to bring it to you — and even then there were some unintentional omissions, which have since been added. In short, it was a very big lift that is going to constantly evolve. The response has been overwhelming; showing the value of bringing a tool like this to the industry. We will soon deep dive into the topics, regions, and a Rising Stars list that we’ve built on the side, so more to come. Thanks to everyone who has shared it, given feedback, and gotten in touch.
Announcing the Resilience Conference Warsaw Agenda
We are excited to announce the agenda for Resilience Conference Warsaw, 15 April 2026. This is the first conference of its kind in Warsaw, and it will bring together the people leading defence tech and innovation in the country, and across the region. Our focus is on how Europe protects the Eastern Flank. The panels will explore this critical question from a number of angles, from information to the air. Some of the smartest people in this industry will be on the stage in Warsaw.
More panels will be added over the next two weeks, so keep checking back. And don’t forget that Early Bird ticket sales end on Friday 20 March. Get yours before the discounted rate expires. Read the rest of our announcement in the Resilience Conference Warsaw section.
We pay for our events through tickets and sponsorship. We don’t have paid content, and we don’t take government money. This allows us to remain independent and curate challenging and impactful content. You can support our work by sponsoring our events. To discuss this, please contact me.
This week has seen some moves in the defence tech investor space which we look at in our People section below. And elsewhere on Resilience Media:
- The UK is setting up meetings between Gulf states and defence tech startups
- How Ukraine is transforming its battlefield data into a world-first AI training hub
- Guest Post from D3 Partner Anton Verkhovodov: Is defence tech a ‘proper’ VC-backable vertical?
- HyImpulse eyes first European launch from SaxaVord as UK space ambitions gather pace
I’ll be back in your inboxes next week. Thanks for reading.
-Leslie Hitchcock, co-founder and Publisher, Resilience Media
The 100 Startups To Watch in 2026
Defence has long been the domain of primes. The war in Ukraine has changed that by introducing the tech sector to defence.
The battlefield is now about drones, autonomy, cheap attritable hardware instead of expensive, exquisite systems. It is about speed, price, and efficiency; about the cost per kill and how we increase lethality with limited defence budgets.
Any question about whether this is unique to Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine is being answered firmly in the Middle East, where cheap Iranian Shaheds are being shot down by expensive missiles and fighter jets. Western militaries are turning to Ukraine and startups that have worked there for help. The cost of sustained warfare is a focus that points back to the need for cheap and rapidly iterated startup hardware over traditional platforms, which can take years and cost a fortune to bring into service.
Startups are proving to be more agile when it comes to addressing these new challenges, and their velocity is attracting both talent and investment to the sector. Startups are becoming scale-ups, and scale-ups are becoming companies valued in the billions of Euros. We have already seen exits and acquisitions at the end of that cycle.
Resilience Media tracks this ecosystem daily. We are at the heart of the discussions, watching the new funds as they are raised, and the new startups as they are founded and scaled.
Sille Pettai steps down from CEO role at SmartCap
- Big news in European defence tech investment. Sille Pettai, the CEO of SmartCap — the Estonian state-owned investment fund — has announced she will step down at the end of June this year after nearly a decade with the organisation.
- Pettai made the announcement on LinkedIn, saying she wanted to leave before a ‘crash and burn’ situation. She has not disclosed what she plans to do next, and SmartCap has not commented on succession. Read the rest from Fiona Alston here.
Bryce Keane joins Sequoia
- After spending nearly a decade at Atomico and three months at Bessemer Venture Partners last autumn, Bryce Keane has joined Sequoia as Communications Advisor, leading the comms for Europe. While at Bessemer, Keane helped launch their European Defence Tech Roadmap, and hails from an Army family in Australia. Will we start to see more from the Silicon Valley giant in terms of their defence investments in Europe? We’ll be watching.
Announcing the Resilience Conference Warsaw Agenda
Leslie Hitchcock and Dr Tobias Stone, co-founders
This is the first conference of its kind in Warsaw, and it will bring together the people leading defence tech and innovation in the country, and across the region. Our focus is on how we protect the Eastern Flank.
The panels will explore this critical question from a number of angles, from information to the air. Our panels will examine the government initiatives being built to engage with and support defence tech. There will be a strong focus on finance, from venture capital to government funding. The leading investors from the region will be talking about their investment strategy, the wider ecosystem, and some of the startups they are backing. Founders will be talking about their own journeys, and about how their tech is being deployed to defend Europe’s Eastern Flank. The Ukrainian military will share their lessons on a panel curated by our partners at Snake Island Institute, and we will deep dive into the important topic of disinformation with a panel curated with our partner, Athena.
We will look upwards, at drones, counter-drones, and space. We will explore single use defence tech, and the emergence of strong dual-use case studies, for example in the space sector. Some of the smartest people in this industry will be on the stage in Warsaw.
Come to learn, but also come to network. The conference is designed to help develop this important ecosystem and the networking will offer an opportunity for startup, investors, and others involved in the sector to meet leaders in the Polish ecosystem, and for Polish attendees to meet the people building defence tech across Europe and the US.
We are a collaborative and mission-driven organisation focussed on the wider ecosystem; nobody pays be to on our stage. We have designed the conference with support from our presenting partner, Expeditions, and with support from our sponsors, OTB Ventures and Nato Innovation Fund, as well as our partners Darkstar, the Pulaski Foundation, Snake Island Institute, and Athena.
