Berlin-based Helsing, an information technology company that uses artificial intelligence to implement security, announced that it has raised €102.5M in its Series A round of funding.
The investment includes €100M from Prima Materia, the European investment company founded by Daniel Ek, co-founder and CEO of Spotify.
With this deal, Ek will join the company’s Board, alongside Helsing’s co-founders Torsten Reil, Gundbert Scherf, and Niklas Köhler.
Capital utilisation
The proceeds from the round will be used to grow Helsing’s existing team of over 70 deep learning researchers, software engineers, and domain experts to further accelerate development of the AI software platform.
Torsten Reil says, “The investment from Prima Materia, alongside the support of our existing investors, is a powerful signal that the UK and Europe are ready to step up. Daniel’s experience, having built one of the largest technology companies in the world, will be invaluable as we scale Helsing to achieve our vision: to help protect free societies for future generations.”
A new type of security and artificial intelligence company
Helsing believes that software – and, in particular, artificial intelligence – will be the key to keep liberal democracies from harm. The company aims to achieve global technology leadership in real-time information processing and turning unstructured sensor data into information advantage for democratic governments.
Co-founder Scherf says, “The information domain has become key to mission success in defence and security. Democracies are struggling to attain information advantage. While we have more and more data and connectivity, we need to process it in real-time to make sense. This is fundamentally a technology problem, which cutting edge AI and software are best positioned to solve.”
Helsing was founded to provide liberal democratic societies with AI technology for defence and national security. Its real-time software platform processes data from multiple sensors directly on vehicles and systems, to provide an integrated view of the operational environment with the aim of faster and more accurate decision-making.
Helsing’s AI has been built to be traceable and explainable from the outset. The company will focus on serving countries which meet the highest democratic standards.
“We believe AI in defence and security must be based on both the highest ethical standards and strong democratic oversight. We follow a multi-domestic approach, providing each country with sovereign, national-eyes-only technology access,” says the company.
Currently, the platform has a presence in the UK and Germany and plans to open in France to complete the setup with three home markets in Q1 2022.
Recently, Helsing has appointed former senior UK MoD official Nick Elliott as CEO of Helsing UK, and Sir Chris Deverell as a senior advisor. Earlier this year, Robert Fink joined as CTO from Palantir where he was Chief Architect.
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