On September 14th, European artificial intelligence (AI) defense firm Helsing announced that it had successfully secured €209 million (approximately $223 million) in Series B funding, led by General Catalyst, a prominent venture capital firm. Saab, the Swedish aerospace and automotive manufacturer, also participated in this funding round as a strategic investor.
Helsing’s primary focus is on advancing AI technology for the protection of democratic nations. Gundbert Scherf, co-founder of Helsing, expressed the company’s dedication to this cause, stating, “We established Helsing with the firm belief that AI will play a crucial role in enabling democracies to safeguard their values. Our recent progress demonstrates that this belief is widely shared by both governments and the industry.”
Founded in 2021, Helsing specializes in developing AI-powered military solutions and components, serving various projects, including the upcoming NATO Eurofighter aircraft upgrade and the Future Combat Air System initiative.
The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence, especially since the introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, has prompted intense competition in the AI landscape. Many companies are striving to provide governments and armed forces with more efficient and cost-effective AI-driven military technologies. Notable players in this domain include Kratos Defense and Shield AI, both headquartered in San Diego.
Artificial intelligence has witnessed unprecedented growth across diverse industries. The advent of generative AI has significantly enhanced natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. These AI models can generate text that closely resembles human language, facilitate language translation, answer queries, and even craft creative content.
The impact of generative AI has extended to the entertainment industry as well. During a press conference held on July 13th, Hollywood actors announced their strike in response to the involvement of AI in representing background performers.
Generative AI, a subset of artificial intelligence, possesses the ability to create new content, such as text, images, or music, based on provided prompts. These tools are trained on vast datasets to generate a wide range of outputs.