More than a year in the making, and with two investments already in the books, a new investment fund focused on defence and security has finally announced its first close. DTCP has pulled together €455 million from LPs that include Deutsche Telekom, Porsche SE, Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund (EIFO), Danica and Estonia’s SmartCap. And Ole Aguirre (a veteran and ex-founder) and Georgia Watson (ex-Lakestar) have been appointed to lead a specialist defence and resilience investment team.
The fund, called DTCP Defence Fund I describes itself as “Europe-led, NATO-aligned,” had already invested in the latest rounds for UK-based Kraken (which raised $175 million in July 2026) and Oslo’s Six Robotics (which raised €12 million the same month). It says there is a third investment currently in the works.
DTCP has a track record in defence tech: it also backed Stark and Quantum Systems prior to this. Having a dedicated fund, however, prioritises companies that fit its investment thesis more directly.
The new fund is emerging at a critical time. Governments in Europe want to modernise their defences and overall resilience in the wake of geopolitical upheaval, and theoretically this creates a procurement pipeline (and revenues) for the startups building this modern software and hardware.
But there remain major gaps in how many of the most promising startups can finance their growth to a scale that makes them practical suppliers, and competitors to the prime contractors who traditionally have cornered the market in doing business with such outsized customers.
Europe has a chronic later-stage funding gap in technology, and that has spilled over into more specific resilience and defence startups — which, given the sensitive nature of building for defence and national security, require even more close understanding of how and where funds are being put. This latest DTCP fund, which will be targeting all stages but mostly Series B and later, is partly aiming at addressing that.
“The Fund addresses a critical need in Europe: accelerating the development and scaling Europe’s own strategic capabilities,” noted Thomas Preuß, managing partner and chief investment officer of DTCP Growth, in a statement. “This requires not only significantly more European capital, but also investors who understand how to identify, support and scale mission-critical technology companies.”
But if there has been a sense of urgency in resilience tech, that hasn’t exactly translated to how funds are built. Rumors of the DTCP Defence Fund I were first reported in August 2025, and in January 2026, DTCP announced the fund would have a target amount of €500 million, under the working name “Project Liberty” — a name that it now seems to have dropped.
The overall plan will be to invest mostly in European startups, but it will also consider those from other NATO member states. It will be looking at all categories of resilience: defence, security, and critical industries, covering technologies like AI, autonomous systems, cybersecurity, communications, and space.
(Side note: the DT of DTCP originally stood for Deutsche Telekom and this was the investment arm of the telecoms giant; it’s now been spun out with the telco moved to anchor investor and the acronym now standing for Digital Transformation Capital Partners. It says it has some €5 billion in assets under management as of this month.)
It’s notable to see the Porche holding company getting involved in the fund: this is the group that sits above the automotive giant as well as related industrial holdings as well as technology investments, and so it could potentially also play a strategic role in how portfolio companies meet scaling demands.
“Europe’s resilience and security will be shaped by the choices we make today. We are therefore proud to join the DTCP Defence Fund as an anchor investor, alongside a strong group of partners. We share the conviction that a resilient Europe requires an innovative and globally competitive defence ecosystem” said Hans Dieter Pötsch, chairman of the board of management of Porsche Automobil Holding SE, in a statement. “Through this investment, we are supporting the next generation of technologies and companies that contribute to Europe’s strategic autonomy and security. We believe that bringing together capital, entrepreneurship and deep industry expertise can help build the capabilities Europe needs for the decades ahead.”
