Helsing's AI Agent Is Now Flying Inside a Gripen Fighter Jet

The first time you see a video of Helsing's AI in action, it's not in a lab or a simulation. It's in the cockpit of a Swedish Gripen fighter jet, the pilot's helmet-mounted display flickering with targeting cues and threat assessments generated in real time. The AI, called Centaur, was trained in a massive reinforcement learning facility to achieve human-level performance in air combat within 24 hours [Contrary Research, Unknown]. Six months after the project began, it was flying live missions, integrated into the jet's open architecture [Contrary Research, Unknown]. This isn't a demo. It's a product, and it's the clearest signal yet that Helsing's bet on AI as a defense layer is moving from the cloud to the metal.

From Oxford Biology to Battlefield AI

Helsing's origin story is a collision of disciplines. Co-founder and Co-CEO Torsten Reil dropped out of an Oxford biology PhD to found NaturalMotion, a company that commercialized dynamic motion synthesis for video games and was later acquired by Zynga for about $527 million [Wikipedia, Unknown] [TechCrunch, 2014]. His co-founders bring the other halves of the equation: Gundbert Scherf, a former McKinsey partner and special advisor in the German Federal Ministry of Defense, and Niklas Köhler, a former Google machine learning engineer [Wikipedia, Unknown] [Contrary Research, Unknown]. The trio founded Helsing in 2021 with a thesis that felt radical at the time: that the next generation of military advantage would be defined not by bigger missiles, but by better software. They positioned the company explicitly as a vendor for democratic governments, a stance that has become a core part of its brand and a filter for its customers [Helsing, Unknown].

The Stack: Software, Swarms, and the Silent Deep

Helsing's portfolio has expanded rapidly from its initial AI software platforms into a full-stack offering across air, sea, and space. The strategy is to layer intelligence onto existing systems while also building new, AI-native hardware where necessary.

• The AI Brain. The core is Altra Recce-Strike, a software platform for real-time battlefield decision-making that fuses data from disparate sensors,satellites, drones, ground radars,into a single operational picture [Contrary Research, Unknown]. This is the command layer.
• The Air Arm. The HX-2 is an electrically powered, software-defined loitering munition, or kamikaze drone, designed for mass production and precision strikes [Helsing, Unknown]. Helsing is producing 6,000 of them for Ukraine and has won a €269 million initial contract to supply them to the German Bundeswehr, with a potential total value of €1.46 billion [12, 2025] [17, 2026].
• The Undersea Fleet. The SG-1 Fathom is a 60-kilogram, propellerless underwater glider that can operate silently for up to 90 days, surveilling maritime chokepoints and protecting subsea infrastructure [Wikipedia, Unknown] [6, 2025]. Its companion AI platform, Lura, handles the acoustic classification and analysis [Contrary Research, Unknown].
• The Fighter Pilot. The Centaur AI agent, integrated with Saab into the Gripen E, represents the pinnacle of human-machine collaboration, acting as a co-pilot that processes sensor data and suggests maneuvers faster than a human alone could [20, 2025].

This expansion has been fueled by staggering capital. Helsing raised a $489 million Series C led by General Catalyst in 2024, valuing the company at $5.4 billion [Crunchbase, 2024]. By 2026, a Series D reportedly led by Dragoneer Investment Group pushed the valuation to $18 billion [3, 2026]. Headcount has swelled to approximately 700 employees [5, 2026].

Co-Founder	Role	Key Background
Torsten Reil	Co-CEO	Founded NaturalMotion (acquired by Zynga); Oxford biology PhD research [Wikipedia, Unknown] [Forbes, 2026]
Gundbert Scherf	Co-CEO	Former McKinsey partner; Special Advisor, German Federal Ministry of Defense [Wikipedia, Unknown]
Niklas Köhler	President	Former Google machine learning engineer [Wikipedia, Unknown] [6, 2026]

The Anduril Question

No discussion of a high-valuation defense tech startup is complete without the specter of Anduril, the Palmer Luckey-founded American behemoth. Both companies sell AI and autonomy to democratic governments. Both build hardware and software. The comparison is inevitable, but Helsing's leadership has crafted a distinct narrative. Where Anduril often frames itself as a disruptive prime contractor, Helsing emphasizes its role as an enabling layer. "We are a software company," Reil told Bloomberg in 2025, arguing that many defense tech firms building hardware from scratch won't survive [Bloomberg, 2025]. The partnership with Saab on the Gripen is illustrative: Helsing didn't build a new jet; it built the AI that makes an existing NATO fighter jet smarter.

The risks here are not trivial. The sales cycles are long and political. Integration with legacy military systems, often decades old, is a notorious engineering quagmire. And the capital intensity of building physical drones and underwater vehicles is a different game than selling pure SaaS. Helsing's answer appears to be a wedge of pragmatism: start with the software that makes old systems work together, then use the relationships and revenue to fund the development of new, AI-optimized platforms. The billion-euro contracts with Germany suggest this wedge is working [17, 2026].

The Next Front

For a company barely five years old, Helsing's roadmap is already being written in active conflict zones and major defense budgets. The next twelve months will test its ability to scale production of the HX-2 drone, deliver on the Gripen integration, and perhaps most importantly, prove that its AI platforms can orchestrate not just single platforms, but entire multi-domain battlespaces,connecting the silent Fathom glider in the Baltic Sea with the fighter jet in the air and the artillery battery on the ground.

The cultural question Helsing is implicitly answering is a profound one for a continent rethinking its defense posture: What does sovereignty look like in the age of AI? It's not just about buying tanks from a trusted ally. It's about owning the intelligence layer that decides where to point them. In a world where software defines capability, Helsing is betting that the most critical defense infrastructure isn't a factory, but a data center, and the most valuable soldier isn't in the trench, but in the code.

Sources

1. [Wikipedia, Unknown] Helsing (company) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsing_(company)
2. [Contrary Research, Unknown] Report: Helsing Business Breakdown & Founding Story | https://research.contrary.com/company/helsing
3. [Helsing, Unknown] Helsing | Artificial intelligence to protect our democracies | https://helsing.ai/
4. [Crunchbase, 2024] Helsing raises at $5.4B valuation | https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/defense-tech-helsing-unicorn-anduril/
5. [Bloomberg, 2025] Watch Is There a 'Bubble' in Defense Tech? Helsing Co-CEO Torsten Reil Says Many Firms Won't Make It | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-10-21/helsing-s-reil-sees-bubble-in-defense-tech-spending-video
6. [12, 2025] Helsing producing 6,000 HX-2 drones for Ukraine
7. [17, 2026] Helsing wins €269M German Bundeswehr contract for HX-2
8. [20, 2025] Helsing's Centaur AI integrated with Saab Gripen E fighter jet
9. [3, 2026] Helsing's Series D valuation hits $18B
10. [5, 2026] Helsing reaches ~700 employees
11. [TechCrunch, 2014] Zynga Buys NaturalMotion For $527M | https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/30/zynga-naturalmotion/
12. [Forbes, 2026] Torsten Reil profile | https://www.forbes.com/profile/torsten-reil/