Building Defense Technologies to Protect Democracies | Torsten Reil, Helsing
August 26, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readTorsten Reil, co-founder and CEO of Helsing, started a European defense technology company in early 2021, at a time when the category was deeply unpopular. Banks grouped defense with pornography and gambling under ESG restrictions, and few VCs would talk to him. He raised an initial €8 million seed round from individuals and family offices, then received a €100 million investment from Daniel Ek (Spotify’s founder) just three months later—Ek’s own money, before the invasion of Ukraine. Reil and his two co-founders, Gundbert Scherf and Nikolai Lien, had independently concluded that Europe needed a new kind of defense company: one that prioritized cheap, simple hardware and put the innovation in software, rather than building the exquisite, expensive systems that legacy primes had historically produced. The mission was to protect democracies, and the conviction was immediate. Reil says the company never debated whether to go full throttle: “We either completely crash the thing or be super successful. We didn’t want to do anything in between.”
The thesis: autonomous mass and software-defined hardware
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What you'll learn
- 1 Building Defense Technologies to Protect Democracies | Torsten Reil, Helsing
- 2 (00:02) **The End of Tanks and Artillery** - Torsten explains why traditional heavy armor is becoming obsolete on the modern battlefield
- 3 (01:44) **Deterrence Through Drone Mass** - Torsten defends his provocative claim that 100,000 strike drones could prevent a land war in Europe
- 4 (03:00) **Autonomous Drone Technology Explained** - How AI enables drones to operate without GPS or remote control in jammed environments
- 5 (05:00) **The Battle of Material: Machines vs Machines** - Why future warfare will be decided by autonomous mass production
- 6 (07:08) **Why Torsten Founded Helsing** - From gaming success to defense technology, the origin story
- 7 (09:27) **Starting a Defense Company in 2021 Was Extremely Unpopular** - The social and financial阻力 Torsten faced
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Torsten Reil has spent his career working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, simulation and entrepreneurship. He began as a biologist studying neural networks and complex systems before founding NaturalMotion, whose technology was used in films including Lord of the Rings, Troy and Harry Potter and later in games including Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. After building and selling NaturalMotion, he eventually returned to entrepreneurship to co-found Helsing, a European defense technology company focused on artificial intelligence and autonomous systems.
Reil believes warfare is undergoing a fundamental shift from humans operating expensive weapons systems toward what he calls autonomous mass: large numbers of AI-controlled machines operating together. He explains why drones are making tanks, artillery and eventually crewed fighter jets increasingly vulnerable; how AI can navigate without GPS in jammed environments; and why Helsing developed Centaur, an AI fighter pilot that has controlled a real Saab Gripen in air combat against a human-operated aircraft. That work led Helsing to begin building its own autonomous fighter jet, the CA1 Europa.
The underlying strategy is to combine simpler, mass-manufacturable hardware with increasingly capable software. Reil argues that future conflicts will become battles of materiel, making manufacturing capacity as important as technological sophistication. Helsing's HX-2 strike drone was redesigned to scale from dozens of units per month to a baseline of 1,000, with the ability to surge to 3,000. He also explains Helsing's concept of distributed “resilience factories,” which allow countries to manufacture systems domestically while reducing their dependence on vulnerable centralized production facilities.
Reil also describes how he runs Helsing and why he considers talent density the most important ingredient in company performance and culture. The company closely monitors recruiting, conducts quarterly performance calibration and makes an unusually large investment in finding and retaining exceptional people. He discusses Helsing's values of “whatever it takes” and “the truth is in the field,” why founders should pursue ambitions large enough to matter, and why he believes commentary has little value compared with actually building something that changes the world.
Show notes: https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/torsten-reil
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Chapters
(00:00:00) Drones, Tanks & the Future of Warfare
(00:07:08) Why Torsten Founded Helsing
(00:09:27) Founder Conviction & Betting on European Defen
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