German autonomous strike drones startup Stark has announced expansion to the UK, as a flurry of tech companies on both sides of the Atlantic look to take advantage of rising defence spending in the country.
Amid growing geopolitical tensions, governments across Europe, including the UK, have committed to upping defence spending to 5% of their GDP by 2035. In recent months US giant Anduril, Germany’s Helsing and Portuguese-UK startup Tekever announced they would open factories and invest hundreds of millions of euros into British defence.
Stark, which makes unmanned weapons systems, will soon begin producing drones at a new factory in the UK. It’s the startup’s first site outside of its home market.
“We need rapid and scalable production to protect our people, defend our sovereignty and deter aggression,” Mike Armstrong, managing director of Stark UK said in a statement. “That means resilient supply chains which stretch across Europe.”
Headquartered in Berlin, Stark was set up by Florian Seibel, cofounder of fellow German autonomous drones startup Quantum Systems, in 2024.
Seibel was approached by the German government to equip Quantum Systems’s surveillance drones with weapons, but was unable to owing to some of his investors’ limitations around investing in weapons. Seibel is no longer involved in day to day operations of Stark but remains a founding investor.
The startup has been largely secretive and has not officially disclosed funding, but reports say that German-American billionaire Peter Thiel and US VC Sequoia Capital have invested in the startup.
Armstrong said Stark wanted to tap into technological and defence expertise in the UK.
The startup is the latest defence tech to expand European operations. In March, US-based Anduril announced it would open a factory and R&D facility in the UK. A source familiar with the plans told Sifted it would produce advanced attack drones alongside other autonomous weapons.
Earlier this month Helsing said it would speed up deployment of its planned £350m investment in a British factory, which would begin manufacturing its surveillance gliders later this year.
This week Stark announced it had acquired Berlin-based company Pleno, which is building autonomous navigation software for drones to boost its swarming capabilities.
Sifted approached Stark for comment.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/stark-uk-expansion/
