Darkstar, an Estonia-based coalition of founders and investors focused on defence tech, has closed €15m of a new €25m fund to exclusively back startups working on military applications, including weapons systems, across Europe.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, longheld ethical red-lines around the defence tech sector, particularly offensive weapons, have eroded. Overall investment in European ‘defence, security and resilience’ tech hit a record high of $5.2bn in 2024, according to Dealroom data.
Darkstar’s biggest backer is Estonian state-backed LP SmartCap, which invested €10m. The has also been backed by more than 30 founders and investors across Europe.
“I’ve been personally active in Ukraine over the last three and a half years,” Darkstar’s cofounder Ragnar Sass tells Sifted. “I think two years ago when I was reading about the state of the war I understood that it’s fundamentally changing warfare.
“I understood that without the involvement of the tech community we don’t get Ukraine to win the war […] but more importantly Europe’s armies are also not ready for modern warfare, this conflict is moving so fast our existing capabilities here are not up to the challenge.”
Darkstar’s first fund has already made two investments, into Farsight Vision, which is using AI and machine learning to build drone video analytics, and Deftak, which is building a rocket system for drone warfare.
Darkstar plans to write five more cheques this year, and will invest up to €1m per company.
Every company the fund backs will have their products tested on the battlefield through Darkstar’s five-day bootcamps run in partnership with Ukrainian military units. Sass says its aim is to build a bridge between Ukraine and the rest of Europe’s defence ecosystem.
“We’ve had the case in the bootcamp that the Ukrainian units made orders on the spot to buy some of the systems,” he says.
“Not everything that works on the Ukraine frontline might work in Nato armies,” he adds. “I don’t believe you can build defence tech products without being active in Ukraine […] the best teams I‘ve seen are working in Ukraine 24/7.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/darkstar-fund-defence-military-applications-weapons/
