Good afternoon from the team at Resilience Media
Greetings from Helsinki where the startup conference name lived up to the weather outside. It is rather unsettling being in a country that shares a 900km border with Russia. As I was en route from the airport into town I was reminded of a conversation I had at Resilience Conference with Teemu Seppala, Technology and Innovation Director, Defence Innovation Network Finland (DEFINE) / City Of Riihimäki. Teemu spoke on a panel called The Future Battlefield: Defending NATO’s Eastern Flank which was about preparedness in the face of imminent threat from a civilian, technology, and military perspective.
Finland excels in preparedness and societal resilience, and for good reason. Russian aggression is a feature of Finnish living memory and Teemu shared the above photo with me to illustrate how their society has not forgotten. The picture, taken in 1985, documents debris from a Soviet missile in Lake Inari, Lapland. The Soviets later apologised, saying the rocket launch was a mistake — but if we look at recent events in the UK, Romania, Poland, the Russian pattern of testing NATO defences is consistent and multi-domain.
Startups across the breadth and depth of the defence tech ecosystem are making a statement about their part in the defence of our democracies. Just this week alone:
- In the UK, Helsing opened a maritime manufacturing facility and Stark opened its first drone factory.
- Kraken Technology Group expanded its team and board, with the addition of Chief Commercial Officer Erica Dill-Russell and appointing rumoured Republican presidential contender Mike Pompeo to its board AND announced a $49M deal with USSOCCOM
- Chaos Industries raised $510 million to build counter-drone radar networks while Sunflower Labs raised $16M to scale autonomous security drones
PhysicsX reached near-unicorn status following $20M investment from Nvidia. Ingrid Lunden, who has been reporting on the company since its early days, covered the announcement which you can read more in our Startup Watch section below.
We also looked at the German commitment to innovation — or lack thereof — in a guest post by Said D Werner and Prof Dr Helmut Schönenberger, excerpted below in our Guest Post section.
Elsewhere on Resilience Media:
- CISA tells critical infrastructure to ‘be air aware’ as drone threats surge
- Keen raises €150M to back defence tech in Europe
- SkySafe launches Forensics as a Service, a way to trace drone accidents
- VIDEO: Proper Voltage makes batteries better for nearly anything, especially the battlefield
- The ‘Waze’ of the open waters: Orca AI’s co-captain brings real-time data sharing to commercial shipping
Given the volume of defence tech news these days, I can’t see things slowing down much in December. Got a tip, funding announcement, or news? Send it our way. And with that, I’ll see you again next week.
-Leslie Hitchcock, co-founder and Publisher, Resilience Media
