Deployment

Helsing, founded in March 2021 in Munich by Torsten Reil, Gundbert Scherf, and Niklas Koehler and chaired by Spotify's Daniel Ek, began as a European defense-artificial-intelligence software company building battlefield ISR fusion, the Altra strike-reconnaissance system, and the Centaur air-combat agent flown in a June 2025 Gripen E trial, and has since moved into strike-drone hardware. Its HX-2 is an electric X-wing precision strike munition with roughly 100 kilometers of range, about 250 kilometers per hour, and up to 5 kilograms of payload, with onboard AI for electronic-warfare resistance, built at the company's southern-Germany Resilience Factory at a stated capacity of more than a thousand per month, while its HF-1 is a plywood-fuselage AI loitering munition with GPS-independent navigation manufactured together with Ukrainian industry. Helsing has raised to a 12-billion-euro valuation through a 600-million-euro Series D in June 2025, roughly 1.37 billion euro in total. The registry records its drone line at production maturity: a German-underwritten 4,000-unit HF-1 order with 1,950 units delivered to Ukraine provides the verified fielding anchor, alongside a 6,000-unit HX-2 order announced in February 2025 and an operational serial-production factory, though the separate air-combat software side such as Centaur remains at trial stage and should not halo the whole company. On AI substance the GPS-independent navigation and electronic-warfare resistance are credible and battlefield-relevant, corroborated by Ukrainian reporting of HF-1 use, but claims of full electronic-warfare immunity are largely company-attested with thin independent validation, and a reported 18-billion-dollar 2026 round, full delivery against the HX-2 order, and sustained thousand-per-month throughput are recorded as claimed but not verified.

HX-2 (and HF-1) by Helsing · Operated by Ukrainian Armed Forces · Catalog entry · 3 sources · not yet field-verified