The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing
11 Dec 2024
Full Episode
When we started Helsing in March 2021, we actually put one of our slides that we thought there were going to be two galvanizing events. One of them was going to be an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the other one an invasion of Taiwan by China. There is a big wave coming towards us. It is autonomy and software in defense, and it's unstoppable.
The thing that we have to avoid is the Tesla moment for the defense sector. If we collectively, including the primes, don't understand that and don't adapt, the same thing is going to happen to defense as happened to the car industry. Where are we in three years with Russia-Ukraine? What happens in China and Taiwan? Again, I think it's plausible that there will be...
I mean, my word, those intros have gotten good. This is Harry Stebbings, and I am so excited to welcome one of the great entrepreneurs of Europe to Hotseat today, Torsten Reil. Torsten is the co-founder and co-CEO of Helsing, a new type of defense company providing artificial intelligence to protect our democracies. Torsten has raised over $825 million,
from the likes of Prima Materia, Eli Gill, Excel, and General Catalyst, to name a few. I also had wanted to make this show happen for a long time. Torsten does not do podcasts, and so this one meant a huge amount to me. But before we dive in, what do Henry Ford and AI have in common? Neither could change the world without automation.
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