Signals Inbox·July 15, 2026·Defense Tech

Can Helsing become the new Anduril?

Helsing can become Europe’s answer to Anduril, but it is not there yet. The company has the ambition, funding and industrial footprint; what it still lacks is Anduril’s revenue, software reach and record of delivering several major programmes at once.

Q1Are Helsing and Anduril actually building the same company?

Helsing and Anduril have roughly 70% business-model similarity.

We reached that percentage by scoring ten concrete dimensions: two points for a strong match, one for a partial match and zero where the models clearly diverge. We built the framework ourselves.

The resemblance goes well beyond drones. Both companies are trying to replace the old contractor rhythm, where development starts after a government writes detailed requirements, with something closer to a technology-company rhythm: put private money at risk, build early, test with soldiers and improve the product quickly. Their large funding rounds and product-led launches show the same basic playbook.

The remaining 30% contains some of the hardest parts of the business. Anduril has gone further in owning the common software layer, producing several categories at once and using one enormous domestic customer to scale them. Helsing is putting together a more distributed system through European partners, national programmes and selected acquisitions.

How similar are Helsing and Anduril?

Q2How far apart are Helsing and Anduril today?

Anduril is still several sizes bigger than Helsing, especially on revenue, major programmes and how far its products have progressed.

When we compare the businesses rather than the headlines, the revenue row tells us more than the valuation row. Helsing is worth almost 30% of Anduril today, yet its forecast revenue is around one-fifth of Anduril’s already reported 2025 revenue after a rough currency conversion. The exact ratio moves with exchange rates, but the order of magnitude does not.

The aircraft programmes make the gap even easier to understand. Helsing has a real CA-1 development team, an acquired aircraft manufacturer and a public timetable. Anduril has already flown its aircraft and received a production award. In military aviation, those extra steps can represent years of engineering, testing and procurement risk.

Helsing and Anduril compared, July 2026

Q3Is Helsing growing faster, or are investors simply paying more?

Helsing is growing fast, but its valuation has moved much faster than the business underneath it.

At roughly five years old, Helsing has reached the $18 billion Series E valuation shown above. Anduril was worth $8.48 billion when it closed its own Series E in December 2022, around five and a half years after its founding. On that one measure, investors value Helsing at more than twice what Anduril was worth at a similar age.

There is real commercial progress behind the jump. Germany approved an initial €268 million HX-2 order, the contract reportedly carries options up to €1.46 billion, and Helsing also has a reported €223 million German combat-cloud contract. Those are substantial wins for a five-year-old company. They look even bigger in Europe, where less than one-fifth of equipment procurement was collaborative in the latest comparable data.

Still, investors are paying 32 times Helsing’s forecast 2026 revenue, compared with 13 times forward revenue for Anduril. Put more simply, a much larger part of Helsing’s price depends on things that still need to happen: repeat drone orders, CA-1 becoming a funded programme, maritime adoption, easier European procurement and the new factories reaching their promised output.

That price may work out. Europe’s security environment has changed quickly, Helsing has few direct peers with the same breadth, and the latest round was oversubscribed. The company just has less room for an average year. A delayed aircraft, weak repeat orders or factories running below plan would damage the story more than the same setback would hurt a company already producing several billion dollars in annual revenue.

Q4Does Helsing really want Anduril’s job?

Yes. Helsing’s latest moves show that it wants the full defence-prime job, rather than a comfortable role as an AI supplier.

The clearest clue comes from Helsing itself. In June 2025, chairman Daniel Ek said the company had evolved from a software business into an “all-domain, AI software and hardware company.” Since then, the product map has kept expanding: CA-1 in combat aviation, SG-1 and the Blue Ocean acquisition underwater, KIRK in tactical space and Area 9 for robotics research.

The company has also been buying the pieces a prime contractor needs. Grob Aircraft gives it aircraft engineering, certification and production. The EURENCO partnership brings warhead development closer to the HX-2 programme. Its UK commitment extends the same approach into underwater production and maintenance.

That ambition goes far beyond selling an autonomy module to Airbus, Saab or Rheinmetall and letting them own the customer. Helsing increasingly wants the product, the software update cycle and a larger share of the contract under its own control.

Its public language remains deliberately European. The company talks about technological sovereignty, democratic customers and reducing dependence on outside suppliers. It has never publicly said, “We want to become the next Anduril,” and there is no prominent former Anduril executive visibly importing the model.

But look at where the money is going. A business developing its own aircraft, underwater platform, strike drone, warhead supply chain and factories is aiming for the top layer of the industry. Helsing wants the strategic position people associate with Anduril, even if it gives that position a European name.

Q5Has Helsing’s technology actually survived a real war?

Helsing’s drones have survived real battlefield use, but the public evidence still falls short of calling HX-2 fully proven at large scale.

The deployment volume is meaningful. Germany backed an initial 4,000 HF-1 drones for Ukraine, followed by 6,000 HX-2s. Helsing says HX-2 is approved for frontline use, listed in Ukraine’s central military ordering system and being delivered at several hundred units per month. It also says more than six Ukrainian units requested the system and one regiment asked for over 1,000 additional drones.

The weak results reported from earlier Ukrainian trials deserve equal attention. One account based on Ukrainian material sent to Germany’s defence ministry said only 25% of drones launched during a frontline test. Another reported five hits from 14 attempts, or about 36%. Helsing disputed the broader claim that orders had been suspended and said the system later completed documented trials and received frontline approval.

A more recent allied test gives us a useful second benchmark. During the US Army’s Project Flytrap exercise in Lithuania, Axios reported that 17 HX-2s produced 15 hits and two near-misses. Fifteen hits from 17 drones is a strong small-sample result after the Ukrainian criticism, though an exercise with company engineers present cannot reproduce every condition of sustained frontline use.

Germany’s February 2026 decision to award the €268 million HX-2 contract adds weight because a customer committed serious money after the controversy. It still leaves open the long-run combat hit rate, unit economics and reliability across thousands of launches. The contract includes much larger options, so the next delivery batches will tell us more than another controlled demonstration.

Anduril is a useful reality check here. Its Ghost and Altius systems have also faced jamming, crashes and disappointing military tests, while Lattice struggled during a 2025 unmanned-vessel exercise. Rapid military development is messy, and sometimes the failures happen in public.

“Fielded and improving” is the strongest label for HX-2 today. Fully proven across large-scale combat would be a stretch.

Q6Can Helsing manufacture weapons at Anduril scale?

Helsing can now manufacture HX-2 at serious scale, although Anduril still has the broader industrial machine.

The freshest evidence arrived on July 14, 2026. Helsing selected West Virginia for its first US Resilience Factory and says the plant will be able to produce more than 2,000 HX-2 drones per month once fully operational. Annualised, that is above 24,000 units from one facility before any further expansion.

The West Virginia site joins RF-1 in southern Germany, which supports the 6,000-unit HX-2 programme, and the Plymouth facility producing and maintaining SG-1 Fathom underwater gliders under a £350 million UK commitment. Grob Aircraft gives Helsing an existing base for CA-1 development and production, while the EURENCO agreement starts localising another important part of the HX-2 supply chain: the warhead.

Helsing now looks like a distributed manufacturer, with dedicated facilities across Germany, the UK and the US. It no longer looks like a software company with one small drone line.

Anduril’s advantage comes from breadth and repetition. Arsenal-1 is a five-million-square-foot plant built around high-volume production, with FQ-44 as its first major aircraft programme. Elsewhere, Anduril says it has doubled Pulsar electronic-warfare capacity from 500 to 1,000 units annually, built solid-rocket-motor capacity for 6,000 tactical motors a year and established facilities designed for dozens of Dive-XL and hundreds of Dive-LD underwater vehicles annually.

Anduril has also shown how quickly an operating line can surge. In March 2026, it delivered more than one month of Pulsar output in under a week from existing inventory while continuing to expand capacity. A surge like that tells us more than factory square footage. In wartime, what counts is what the line can ship when demand suddenly jumps.

Q7Does Helsing own enough of the military software layer?

Helsing still controls less of the shared military software layer than Anduril, which has pushed Lattice much further into command and data systems.

Helsing’s strongest software sits deep inside specific missions. Centaur took control of a Saab Gripen E during Project Beyond and now underpins CA-1. Altra connects reconnaissance and strike systems. Lura processes underwater acoustic data. KIRK aims to combine space surveillance with AI-based targeting and shorten the time between finding a target and acting on it.

The Gripen work is particularly useful evidence. Helsing and Saab integrated Centaur into an operational fighter in less than six months, according to the companies. That shows Helsing can put autonomy inside a complex existing platform without waiting for a new aircraft to be built, exactly the kind of speed European militaries need.

Helsing is also taking a shortcut to distribution through Systematic. Its software will integrate with SitaWare, a command-and-control suite used by more than 50 nations. That could put Helsing’s autonomy in front of many customers faster, although Systematic still owns an important part of the user and command layer.

Anduril’s recent deployments show a wider platform footprint. During the US Army’s Ivy Mass exercise, Lattice expanded from roughly ten connected soldier devices in an earlier iteration to more than 2,500. The system linked 40 applications, 36 data feeds and 37 sensors and effectors across nine hardware formats. The Army has since selected Anduril to lead the common data baseline for its Next Generation Command and Control programme.

Lattice also sits behind Anduril’s counter-drone enterprise work, including an initial $87 million task order within a ten-year contract vehicle worth up to $20 billion. NATO has now started a nine-month evaluation of Lattice for air command and control, covering air traffic, surveillance and force management.

Helsing looks strongest as the autonomy brain inside particular weapons and mission chains. Anduril is further along in becoming the common digital plumbing that connects many weapons, applications and users.

Helsing will close that gap when an army keeps its software running across units and weapon types for years, not when it appears for one valuable part of the system.

Q8Is Europe finally a big enough customer to create another Anduril?

Europe can fund another Anduril-sized company today, but its buying system remains the bigger problem.

European NATO members and Canada spent $574 billion on defence in 2025, up 20% in real terms from 2024. EU members alone spent €343 billion in 2024, a 19% annual increase. A market of that size can support several companies worth tens of billions of dollars.

Policy is starting to move too. The EU’s SAFE instrument provides up to €150 billion in loans for defence investment, with common procurement generally involving at least two countries. Disbursements have now started, including more than €6.5 billion for Poland in May 2026 and almost €1 billion for Lithuania in June. Drones and strategic enablers sit among the programme’s priority areas.

The latest comparable numbers on how Europe buys weapons remain poor. Collaborative European procurement accounted for less than one-fifth of equipment spending in 2022. Between mid-2022 and mid-2023, 78% of European procurement spending went to suppliers outside the EU, including 63% to US companies. Those figures predate the newest spending wave, but they show the starting point Helsing is trying to escape.

Fragmentation changes how a company scales. Anduril can win one US programme, standardise a product and spread the development cost across a large customer. Helsing may need separate requirements, local partners, political agreements and production arrangements for Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, Poland and others.

SAFE can help turn some national orders into joint ones. The first convincing proof will come when several countries buy the same Helsing product, with the same configuration and a shared production plan.

Q9Can Helsing keep Anduril out of Europe?

Helsing cannot keep Anduril out of Europe, because Anduril is already removing the easiest reasons to reject an American supplier.

Helsing starts with a real advantage. Its majority ownership remains European after the latest funding round, it is organised as a European company, and it openly builds around European technological sovereignty. It can also offer local engineering, production and partnerships with companies such as Saab, Hensoldt, Systematic, Mistral and OHB.

That pitch becomes powerful when a government cares about wartime supply, local intellectual property, domestic jobs, software control and political dependence on the US.

Anduril has spent the past year working directly around that argument. It partnered with Rheinmetall to develop and manufacture European versions of Fury, Barracuda and solid rocket motors. It won a Dutch counter-drone contract, entered the next stage of Britain’s Project NYX and secured NATO’s first Lattice evaluation. In July 2026, it also agreed with Poland’s PGZ to produce thousands of Barracuda-500M missiles in Bydgoszcz, with a plan to increase European content over time.

European governments now face a more complicated choice than European sovereignty versus American imports. Anduril can offer local production, European partners and more European components over time while bringing products that are often further along.

Helsing’s European identity will help most in programmes where control of data, source code and future upgrades carries heavy political weight. Anduril will be dangerous where a government wants a mature system quickly and accepts a localised American design.

Q10Could Helsing challenge Anduril in America too?

Helsing can now make a credible run at the US defence market, although Anduril still owns the home-field advantage.

Helsing’s West Virginia announcement gives the company its first US manufacturing base and a stated capacity above 2,000 HX-2s per month once the plant is fully operating. Building in the US removes several procurement objections at once: domestic production, jobs, supply security and the ability to serve American demand without shipping every unit from Europe.

The factory follows a US Army test of HX-2 during Project Flytrap in Lithuania, where the reported 17-drone run produced 15 hits and two near-misses. Helsing also sent hardware and software engineers to the exercise, which fits the hands-on way it works with military customers elsewhere.

The timing tells us something too. Helsing announced the factory one day after closing its $1.8 billion round, using fresh capital to pursue the world’s largest defence customer rather than accepting a permanent role as Europe’s local champion.

A factory announcement and a successful exercise still fall well short of a US programme of record. Anduril has years of Pentagon relationships, several major contract vehicles and products already moving through US production decisions. Helsing now has an entry route. Anduril has the home-field advantage.

Q11What will always make Helsing different from Anduril?

Helsing will probably remain more dependent on partners and less vertically integrated than Anduril, even if it catches up in size.

Anduril’s usual move is to own the central architecture, the vehicle and increasingly the factory. Lattice connects the systems, Arsenal produces them, and acquisitions have brought more propulsion, underwater and aircraft capability inside the company.

Helsing owns more hardware every year, yet its model still depends heavily on a network: Saab for fighter integration, Hensoldt for sensors and data infrastructure, Systematic for command software, Mistral for AI models, OHB and Kongsberg for space and national partners for market access.

Europe’s political structure pushes Helsing in that direction. Large defence programmes often need each country to receive a share of the work, local production and national industrial participation before several governments will support them. A partner-heavy model can be slower to coordinate, but it can also make Helsing easier for European states to trust and adopt.

The trade-off is straightforward. Anduril can usually make design decisions faster because it controls more layers. Helsing can draw on specialised European companies and spread political ownership across several countries, although every extra partner adds technical interfaces, negotiations and another company taking a share of the contract.

Helsing’s public customer policy also appears narrower. The company says it evaluates which democracies it will work with through qualitative and quantitative guidelines. That gives Helsing a distinct political filter and could limit some export opportunities that another supplier might pursue.

Helsing’s endgame looks different: become the intelligence centre of a European defence network without reproducing Anduril’s exact corporate shape.

Q12So, can Helsing become the new Anduril?

Helsing can become Anduril’s European equal, but today it remains well behind on revenue, software reach, production breadth and major programmes.

The case for Helsing starts with how quickly it has filled in the missing pieces. Eighteen months ago, the company could still be described mainly as a military AI supplier with a new strike drone. Today it has combat-aircraft and underwater programmes, tactical-space ambitions, factories in three countries, large German contracts and a foothold in the US market.

The case against the comparison is equally concrete. Anduril has $2.2 billion in reported annual revenue, a $61 billion valuation, a combat-aircraft production award, a wide Lattice footprint, a route to as much as $20 billion through one Army contract vehicle and operating production lines across several categories.

Helsing’s next two years should settle much of the debate. The milestones are easy to state and hard to fake: deliver the German HX-2 order reliably, turn the new factories into measured output, fly CA-1 in 2027, convert at least one multinational software or platform project into a long-term programme and win a meaningful US order.

If those pieces land, Helsing will move beyond the “European Anduril” nickname and become one of the two companies shaping Western defence technology. If they do not, its valuation will look like investors paid early for a role the company never fully secured.

For now, the answer is yes, with one hard qualifier: Helsing can become the new Anduril in strategic importance, but it still has to earn the comparison through delivery.

Can Helsing become the new Anduril?