Good afternoon from Resilience Media.

These speakers represent some of the most ambitious and exciting thinking in the defence tech ecosystem, at the investor and the military level, along with startups like Kraken Technology Group, Origin Robotics, Tiberius Aerospace, and Sapient Perception, plus industry incumbent Systematic.

At our conference, the panels and fireside chats will explore what the region has learned from its support of Ukraine, and what they can share about resilience, whole of society defence, and innovation in the land, air, sea, and information domains across Northern Europe. We can’t wait to see you there!

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It’s been a big week for funding news across various sections of the defence tech ecosystem. Resilience Media Reporter Paul Sawyers covers announcements from Swebal (€30M for a TNT production facility) and Quantum Motion ($160M for silicon-based quantum computers) in our Deals section below. Paul also reported on Waiv Robotics, a UK-based maritime robotics company that has just emerged from stealth. Read that piece here.

Following on from the report detailing the hybrid war Russia has been waging on Poland, Editor at Large John Biggs conducted an interview with Aleksander Olech, editor-in-chief of Defence24.com. Their conversation covered what acts of hybrid war Poland is experiencing, what the average Polish citizen should expect, and how bad these attacks can get. Read the interview here.

In the Dispatches from Estonia section, Reporter Fiona Alston covers a new drone testing lab which will more tech get into production for commercial and military use. With testing wait lists reaching up to two years, the Tallinn-based lab will be a welcome addition to the industry. Read an excerpt of the piece below.

Elsewhere on Resilience Media:

• Guest Post: As space gets more dangerous, resilience matters more than ever
• Europe greenlights defence tech funding in new Brave1 partnership (apply by 10 May!)
• UK MoD tests British-built anti-Shahed system in Jordan

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

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

Quantum Motion raises $160M for silicon-based quantum computers that fit in a server rack

• Large-scale quantum computers remain an elusive goal, but with multiple nations hustling to be the first to build and use quantum computing to their advantage, the race to find a breakthrough remains strong and urgent — translating into significant funding for startups contributing compelling work to the field.
• In one of the latest examples, Quantum Motion, the UK startup building ‘full-stack’ quantum computers based on standard silicon processors, has raised $160 million.
• Spanish venture capital (VC) firm Mundi Ventures (by way of its €1 billion Kembara fund) and US-based VC firm DCVC are co-leading the Series C, with participation also from British Business Bank (BBB) and Oxford Science Enterprises, along with strategic investors Porsche and Bosch Ventures.
• The valuation has not been disclosed; we will update this post as we learn more.

Swebal raises $35M to rekindle Europe’s TNT supply chain

• NATO is facing a shortage of TNT, an essential explosive in the manufacturing of weapons. Now, startups are setting up to see how they can fill the gap. In the latest development, Sweden Ballistics, a defence manufacturing company that also goes by the name Swebal, has raised €30 million ($35 million) in equity funding to complete construction of a new TNT production facility.
• Founded out of Nora, Sweden, in 2024, Swebal says the funding will allow it to move ahead with construction of the plant in Nora, which would become one of the first new TNT production facilities to be built in Europe since the Cold War, with full-scale production expected by 2028.
• The round includes backing from Sweden’s former Chief of Army, Major General (ret) Karl Engelbrektson, alongside Pär Svärdson, founder of e-commerce companies Apotea and Adlibris, and Thomas von Koch, a founding member and former chief executive of private equity firm EQT, as well as a group of Swedish family offices.

Estonia is setting up a new ‘rare drone’ tech testing lab to ease the European bottleneck

Fiona Alston, Reporter

Estonia has unveiled plans for a new lab designed to test the next wave of defence technology, a facility that should help more cutting-edge ideas make their way into commercial production and military use.

Metrosert, a research centre and home to the country’s metrology institute, said that the lab will be part of a new drone testing centre being built in the Haabersti area of Tallinn. The €7 million lab, funded by the Government and a Nordic Investment Bank loan, and the larger centre are expected to be completed in 2027 and open for use by Q3.

The lab’s arrival is coming at a significant moment in defence technology in Europe.

A wave of innovations is landing in the industry at the moment, such as new kinds of drones to evade electronic warfare. These are spurred not just by advances in areas like artificial intelligence and engineering, but also by what adversaries are building. (The lab will focus on “electromagnetic compatibility and radar cross-section (EMC/RCS)” — in other words the technology behind how radar visibility (or invisibility) and resilience to electromagnetic interference work.)

Yet across Europe, defence technology is facing a bottleneck: there are not enough facilities for prototype and device testing — essential steps for getting any hardware and software to the next stages of their development and production.

The waitlist for testing in existing labs in Europe can be as long as two years, said Rainer Kivimäe, the head of Mertrosert’s Drone Technologies Unit. EMC/RCS testing labs are “heavily overbooked across Europe,” he said.

Continue reading here.

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