Latest news with #MichaelKahn
Mint
30-04-2025
- Business
- Mint
Mission before money: how Europes defence startups are luring AI talent
European defence startups attract AI engineers War in Ukraine reduces stigma around defence industry Higher European defence budgets should support investment Zeki talent database shows sustained growth despite lower pay By Supantha Mukherjee, Michael Kahn, Elizabeth Howcroft STOCKHOLM/PRAGUE/PARIS, April 30 (Reuters) - Some European tech workers who might once have headed to the United States are looking at defence startups closer to home. Others are rushing back to Europe from jobs abroad. A sense of patriotism stirred by the war in Ukraine and U.S. President Donald Trump's upending of security alliances is a motivation for many, as well as the opportunity to make money as European governments boost military spending. For others, it's the appeal of working on cutting-edge battlefield applications that use artificial intelligence. Reuters spoke to two dozen AI engineers, venture capital firms, government officials and defence companies in Europe who said the influx of tech talent reflected a changed political landscape as the United States retreats from its post-World War Two role as guarantor of Europe's defences. "There are people that are really mission-focused, and what they want to do in their life is to have an impact and not only earn a big salary," said Loïc Mougeolle, CEO of Paris-based battlefield AI provider Comand AI. "They're really motivated to have an impact rebuilding Europe and change the course of history for Europe." There are longstanding ethical concerns about the use of AI in battlefield contexts. But the technology appeals to investors: Comand AI raised $10 million in a December funding round, while Germany's Alpine Eagle, which focuses on technology to counter autonomous drones, raised 10 million euros ($11.4 million) in March. Amid intense competition for AI talent, Mougeolle said Comand AI has recruited engineers and product managers from U.S.-based ChatGPT maker OpenAI and data analytics provider Palantir Technologies. Alpine Eagle plans to hire across product, engineering, business development and sales as it looks to expand outside Germany. "Europe, in terms of defence and also public security, is a huge market," CEO Jan-Hendrik Boelens told Reuters. Salaries in Europe can be significantly lower than in the United States: Glassdoor data shows Helsing - Europe's only defence "unicorn", valued at over $1 billion - pays up to $150,000 per year for an AI engineer, compared with $270,000 at Palantir or $380,000 at Google. Helsing declined to comment for this story. As well as poaching experienced talent, companies like Comand AI, Helsing and Alpine Eagle are recruiting new graduates. Stelios Koroneos, founder of a Greek defence tech startup, said the war in Ukraine had reduced the stigma around working in defence for many young engineers. "Young people started realizing freedom does not come for free," Koroneos said. "You need to be able to defend yourselves. Some do it with guns and others do it with the knowledge they have and the things they build." Julian Dierkes, a 27-year old doctoral student at Germany's RWTH Aachen University, researches reinforcement learning, which trains software to make autonomous decisions to achieve optimal results and has broad applications for defence. "For me it is important if I do research in defence that I am protecting European democracies," he told Reuters. STARTUPS SURGE Defence startups have surged since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and technology - particularly drones - has helped keep Kyiv in the fight. PitchBook data shows venture capital investment in European defence companies reached $626 million in 2024, up from $254 million in 2023 and $62 million in 2022. And Europe's rearmament plans promise more: the European Union aims to mobilise 800 billion euros ($911 billion) for defence while countries like Germany have pledged massive increases in their defence budgets. According to the Zeki State of AI Talent Report, European defence companies are targeting top engineers as even established firms shift focus from hardware to software for everything from drones to troop-tracking technology. Its analysis, based on a dataset of 800,000 people, found the number of top AI engineers in Europe's defence sector based on published research soared to 1,700 in 2024 from 144 in 2014. Comparable U.S. roles grew to 6,927 from 487 over the same period, according to Zeki data. Zeki defined top talent as engineers with a proven track record of breaking new ground in AI discovery such as published research. "We believe this represents significant and sustained growth in the sector," Zeki's chief executive Tom Hurd told Reuters. Investors, tech workers and recruiters said unease with the current U.S. political environment was prompting some Europeans to seek opportunities at home. Deep cuts to funding for universities and research bodies by Trump's administration have prompted scientists in other disciplines to consider moving to Europe. "Many of the world's top AI researchers come from Europe. Some went to the U.S., but many are returning to work on European sovereignty, resilience, and long-term value creation," said Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, managing director at U.S. venture capital firm General Catalyst in Berlin. "I think that's a powerful signal." Benjamin Wolba last year co-founded the European Defense Tech Hub, which aims to connect tech founders, investors and policymakers and whose events have received sponsorship from Helsing and General Catalyst. He said more than 12 defence tech startups had emerged from hackathons it organised in Munich, Copenhagen and Paris in 2024 that were attended by around 440 people. The privately-owned network hosted a similar event in Amsterdam last month. "We're seeing growing anecdotal evidence that AI graduates are increasingly open to working in defence, especially over the past 12 months," Wolba said. British university student Michael Rowley, 20, said he had recently rejected offers of accounting and more traditional AI jobs to work for a company developing technology that allows sensors to better track troop movements. "When I decided to go into defence I had quite a few options, and for me it was the opportunity to do meaningful work," said Rowley, whose Tiresias startup won a tech event in Munich in February. "If I want to work for most tech companies I might write code for advertising, but to be able to contribute to the front lines and help protect democracy is an opportunity not many people get." Marie Inuzuka worked at OpenAI and Palantir before joining Comand AI as a product manager in December last year, attracted by the opportunity to do "more mission-driven, impactful work". The 34-year-old is a descendant of survivors of the 1945 U.S. bombing of Nagasaki. "My grandparents lived through the atomic bomb, so defence has always been very close to my heart," she told Reuters.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mission before money: how Europe's defence startups are luring AI talent
By Supantha Mukherjee, Michael Kahn, Elizabeth Howcroft STOCKHOLM/PRAGUE/PARIS (Reuters) -Some European tech workers who might once have headed to the United States are looking at defence startups closer to home. Others are rushing back to Europe from jobs abroad. A sense of patriotism stirred by the war in Ukraine and U.S. President Donald Trump's upending of security alliances is a motivation for many, as well as the opportunity to make money as European governments boost military spending. For others, it's the appeal of working on cutting-edge battlefield applications that use artificial intelligence. Reuters spoke to two dozen AI engineers, venture capital firms, government officials and defence companies in Europe who said the influx of tech talent reflected a changed political landscape as the United States retreats from its post-World War Two role as guarantor of Europe's defences. "There are people that are really mission-focused, and what they want to do in their life is to have an impact and not only earn a big salary," said Loïc Mougeolle, CEO of Paris-based battlefield AI provider Comand AI. "They're really motivated to have an impact rebuilding Europe and change the course of history for Europe." There are longstanding ethical concerns about the use of AI in battlefield contexts. But the technology appeals to investors: Comand AI raised $10 million in a December funding round, while Germany's Alpine Eagle, which focuses on technology to counter autonomous drones, raised 10 million euros ($11.4 million) in March. Amid intense competition for AI talent, Mougeolle said Comand AI has recruited engineers and product managers from U.S.-based ChatGPT maker OpenAI and data analytics provider Palantir Technologies. Alpine Eagle plans to hire across product, engineering, business development and sales as it looks to expand outside Germany. "Europe, in terms of defence and also public security, is a huge market," CEO Jan-Hendrik Boelens told Reuters. Salaries in Europe can be significantly lower than in the United States: Glassdoor data shows Helsing - Europe's only defence "unicorn", valued at over $1 billion - pays up to $150,000 per year for an AI engineer, compared with $270,000 at Palantir or $380,000 at Google. Helsing declined to comment for this story. As well as poaching experienced talent, companies like Comand AI, Helsing and Alpine Eagle are recruiting new graduates. Stelios Koroneos, founder of a Greek defence tech startup, said the war in Ukraine had reduced the stigma around working in defence for many young engineers. "Young people started realizing freedom does not come for free," Koroneos said. "You need to be able to defend yourselves. Some do it with guns and others do it with the knowledge they have and the things they build." Julian Dierkes, a 27-year old doctoral student at Germany's RWTH Aachen University, researches reinforcement learning, which trains software to make autonomous decisions to achieve optimal results and has broad applications for defence. "For me it is important if I do research in defence that I am protecting European democracies," he told Reuters. STARTUPS SURGE Defence startups have surged since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and technology - particularly drones - has helped keep Kyiv in the fight. PitchBook data shows venture capital investment in European defence companies reached $626 million in 2024, up from $254 million in 2023 and $62 million in 2022. And Europe's rearmament plans promise more: the European Union aims to mobilise 800 billion euros ($911 billion) for defence while countries like Germany have pledged massive increases in their defence budgets. According to the Zeki State of AI Talent Report, European defence companies are targeting top engineers as even established firms shift focus from hardware to software for everything from drones to troop-tracking technology. Its analysis, based on a dataset of 800,000 people, found the number of top AI engineers in Europe's defence sector based on published research soared to 1,700 in 2024 from 144 in 2014. Comparable U.S. roles grew to 6,927 from 487 over the same period, according to Zeki data. Zeki defined top talent as engineers with a proven track record of breaking new ground in AI discovery such as published research. "We believe this represents significant and sustained growth in the sector," Zeki's chief executive Tom Hurd told Reuters. Investors, tech workers and recruiters said unease with the current U.S. political environment was prompting some Europeans to seek opportunities at home. Deep cuts to funding for universities and research bodies by Trump's administration have prompted scientists in other disciplines to consider moving to Europe. "Many of the world's top AI researchers come from Europe. Some went to the U.S., but many are returning to work on European sovereignty, resilience, and long-term value creation," said Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, managing director at U.S. venture capital firm General Catalyst in Berlin. "I think that's a powerful signal." MORE THAN MONEY Benjamin Wolba last year co-founded the European Defense Tech Hub, which aims to connect tech founders, investors and policymakers and whose events have received sponsorship from Helsing and General Catalyst. He said more than 12 defence tech startups had emerged from hackathons it organised in Munich, Copenhagen and Paris in 2024 that were attended by around 440 people. The privately-owned network hosted a similar event in Amsterdam last month. "We're seeing growing anecdotal evidence that AI graduates are increasingly open to working in defence, especially over the past 12 months," Wolba said. British university student Michael Rowley, 20, said he had recently rejected offers of accounting and more traditional AI jobs to work for a company developing technology that allows sensors to better track troop movements. "When I decided to go into defence I had quite a few options, and for me it was the opportunity to do meaningful work," said Rowley, whose Tiresias startup won a tech event in Munich in February. "If I want to work for most tech companies I might write code for advertising, but to be able to contribute to the front lines and help protect democracy is an opportunity not many people get." Marie Inuzuka worked at OpenAI and Palantir before joining Comand AI as a product manager in December last year, attracted by the opportunity to do "more mission-driven, impactful work". The 34-year-old is a descendant of survivors of the 1945 U.S. bombing of Nagasaki. "My grandparents lived through the atomic bomb, so defence has always been very close to my heart," she told Reuters. ($1 = 0.8786 euros)
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Estonia's tech investors take defence into their own hands as Russian threat looms
By Michael Kahn PRAGUE (Reuters) - Estonia, a Baltic country of 1.4 million people that has long punched far above its weight in the tech sector, is now leading central and eastern Europe's rush to fund defence projects spurred by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It is not hard to see why. While heightened security concerns have boosted defence investment across Europe, nowhere is Russia's threat perceived so acutely as in Estonia and its Baltic neighbours, which border Russia and spent decades under Moscow's rule during the Soviet Union era. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. "Philosophically, Estonians think about how to defend the country every day," says tech entrepreneur Sten Tamkivi. The early-stage Skype executive told Reuters the war spurred him and his London partners to tap their 800 million euro investment platform Plural - which also includes TransferWise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus - for defence projects and others that support European sovereignty. "We never came into this saying we want to do defence but growing tension in NATO's eastern flank is tactile," Tamkivi said, noting a growing number of defence pitches and foreign investors scouring for opportunities in the sector. "We need to solve the urgent problem of defence first," he said. For example, last July Plural joined the 450 million euro Series C funding in German AI company Helsing, which uses data to bolster defence, intelligence and national security systems, and has closed another defence deal so far in 2025. According to data from the share of European defence tech investments has risen to 1.7% of venture capital funding in 2024 from just 0.4% in 2022, reaching nearly $1 billion. Much of the money flows to western Europe but the number of funding rounds has tripled in central and eastern Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, data showed. European Union member Estonia plays an outsized role in its eastern flank. As a home to several tech Unicorns - startups that reached a $1 billion valuation, such as Skype, Bolt, TransferWise and others - it has minted scores of wealthy tech executives with the financial heft to support emerging defence companies. Its proximity to Ukraine also allows close cooperation with front-line units there to quickly test and tweak technology while the privately-funded groups in the Baltic nation are able to invest in purely military technologies. In contrast, in Poland - the region's biggest economy and major provider of military aid to Kyiv - many venture firms receive public funding which prevents them from directly financing military projects. Still, funds supporting defence projects also emerge elsewhere in the region. Vojta Rocek, a partner at Prague-based Presto Ventures, told Reuters his firm's new 150 million euro fund launched in partnership with Czech arms maker CSG plans investments in defence-focused startups. Since last spring, the team has reviewed more than 1,500 pitches, held calls with more than 600 teams and short-listed 60 startups, resulting in three closed deals and three more nearing completion, Rocek said. He said cyber security, quantum computing and AI represent main areas of focus. STRAIGHT TO BATTLEFIELD Ragnar Sass, the founder of Tallinn-based Darkstar - a consortium of tech entrepreneurs and former military officers - told Reuters technology offering the best prospects of rapid deployment to the Ukraine battlefield such as drone thermal cameras and software systems is most appealing. For example, Darkstar recently invested in drone data analytic company Farsight, said Sass who estimated defence startups numbered around 100 compared to 10 a few years ago. "In the last few months there has been a big change among the sentiment of investors," said Sass, the founder of Estonian unicorn Pipedrive. "I haven't seen a sector developing as fast as I've seen now." Growing venture capital interest across eastern Europe promises to fill a funding gap defence technology startups face because of banks' reluctance to lend on fears of falling foul of environmental, social and governance regulations, which also limit public funding, investors say. "We were a little doubtful we would see enough pitch decks in the defence space but the number is growing each month," said Presto Ventures' Rocek. "Everybody woke up. People thought the war would end swiftly and it has not." Governments in the region are also starting to act. The Czechs have launched a programme to co-finance small enterprises in the sector to spur its development, Radka Konderlova, the defence ministry official in charge of cooperation with industry, told Reuters. In Estonia, the government last month launched a 100 million euro fund for the emerging defence tech sector, said Sille Pettai, chief executive and fund manager at SmartCap, which will manage the funds. The longer term goal is to attract global investors to a tech ecosystem now supported by what she calls "patriotic capital" of local wealthy tech entrepreneurs. The Estonian defence industry aims to hit 2 billion euros in revenue by 2030, up from a current 500 million euros and with a focus on disruptive offensive defence technologies, she said. "Defending a small country is expensive. We need to be smart and know where our strengths are, so we built on technology," Pettai told Reuters.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Estonia's tech investors take defence into their own hands as Russian threat looms
By Michael Kahn PRAGUE (Reuters) - Estonia, a Baltic country of 1.4 million people that has long punched far above its weight in the tech sector, is now leading central and eastern Europe's rush to fund defence projects spurred by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It is not hard to see why. While heightened security concerns have boosted defence investment across Europe, nowhere is Russia's threat perceived so acutely as in Estonia and its Baltic neighbours, which border Russia and spent decades under Moscow's rule during the Soviet Union era. "Philosophically, Estonians think about how to defend the country every day," says tech entrepreneur Sten Tamkivi. The early-stage Skype executive told Reuters the war spurred him and his London partners to tap their 800 million euro investment platform Plural - which also includes TransferWise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus - for defence projects and others that support European sovereignty. "We never came into this saying we want to do defence but growing tension in NATO's eastern flank is tactile," Tamkivi said, noting a growing number of defence pitches and foreign investors scouring for opportunities in the sector. "We need to solve the urgent problem of defence first," he said. For example, last July Plural joined the 450 million euro Series C funding in German AI company Helsing, which uses data to bolster defence, intelligence and national security systems, and has closed another defence deal so far in 2025. According to data from the share of European defence tech investments has risen to 1.7% of venture capital funding in 2024 from just 0.4% in 2022, reaching nearly $1 billion. Much of the money flows to western Europe but the number of funding rounds has tripled in central and eastern Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, data showed. European Union member Estonia plays an outsized role in its eastern flank. As a home to several tech Unicorns - startups that reached a $1 billion valuation, such as Skype, Bolt, TransferWise and others - it has minted scores of wealthy tech executives with the financial heft to support emerging defence companies. Its proximity to Ukraine also allows close cooperation with front-line units there to quickly test and tweak technology while the privately-funded groups in the Baltic nation are able to invest in purely military technologies. In contrast, in Poland - the region's biggest economy and major provider of military aid to Kyiv - many venture firms receive public funding which prevents them from directly financing military projects. Still, funds supporting defence projects also emerge elsewhere in the region. Vojta Rocek, a partner at Prague-based Presto Ventures, told Reuters his firm's new 150 million euro fund launched in partnership with Czech arms maker CSG plans investments in defence-focused startups. Since last spring, the team has reviewed more than 1,500 pitches, held calls with more than 600 teams and short-listed 60 startups, resulting in three closed deals and three more nearing completion, Rocek said. He said cyber security, quantum computing and AI represent main areas of focus. STRAIGHT TO BATTLEFIELD Ragnar Sass, the founder of Tallinn-based Darkstar - a consortium of tech entrepreneurs and former military officers - told Reuters technology offering the best prospects of rapid deployment to the Ukraine battlefield such as drone thermal cameras and software systems is most appealing. For example, Darkstar recently invested in drone data analytic company Farsight, said Sass who estimated defence startups numbered around 100 compared to 10 a few years ago. "In the last few months there has been a big change among the sentiment of investors," said Sass, the founder of Estonian unicorn Pipedrive. "I haven't seen a sector developing as fast as I've seen now." Growing venture capital interest across eastern Europe promises to fill a funding gap defence technology startups face because of banks' reluctance to lend on fears of falling foul of environmental, social and governance regulations, which also limit public funding, investors say. "We were a little doubtful we would see enough pitch decks in the defence space but the number is growing each month," said Presto Ventures' Rocek. "Everybody woke up. People thought the war would end swiftly and it has not." Governments in the region are also starting to act. The Czechs have launched a programme to co-finance small enterprises in the sector to spur its development, Radka Konderlova, the defence ministry official in charge of cooperation with industry, told Reuters. In Estonia, the government last month launched a 100 million euro fund for the emerging defence tech sector, said Sille Pettai, chief executive and fund manager at SmartCap, which will manage the funds. The longer term goal is to attract global investors to a tech ecosystem now supported by what she calls "patriotic capital" of local wealthy tech entrepreneurs. The Estonian defence industry aims to hit 2 billion euros in revenue by 2030, up from a current 500 million euros and with a focus on disruptive offensive defence technologies, she said. "Defending a small country is expensive. We need to be smart and know where our strengths are, so we built on technology," Pettai told Reuters.
