DefenseTech: On the Edge, From the Front Line to the Frontier of Innovation, Meet the French Startups Building Tomorrow's Defense
An exclusive dive into the French startups redefining the rules of defense.
This article is written by Agathe Thiery (founder at Mind the Gap) & Emma Caillat (Defense Tech & European Sovereignty - VC @ Hexa Sprint). It is a collaboration between Mind the gap and Hexa Sprint. Mind The Gap investigates European technologies and innovations driving real geopolitical and societal impact.
Hexa recently launched a new accelerator, Hexa Sprint, which is currently supporting defense startups through its program (500k investment and operational support)
If you’re building in defense and looking to accelerate your growth, you can apply here.
When we first met at Hexa on a Sunday afternoon a few months ago, we had no idea we would end up here. Friday evening. 6:30 PM. Martin de Gourcuff welcomes us warmly to his bunker-like offices and shows us around the former production lines of the startup turned unicorn.
The next day, the news is brutal: the war in Iran has just begun. Like the Russian-Ukrainian war before it, this new conflict reveals a profound paradigm shift, a new era of the battlefield. While the collective imagination still pictures the so-called “Primes”, like Safran, Thales, or Airbus, as the drivers of innovation, it is now startups that are developing cutting-edge technological products at record speed, addressing the challenges of today’s conflicts directly on the ground. These startups support the military directly on the front lines, delivering the best solutions in a world where everything moves fast. A world where mechanization gives way to dronization, where automation and artificial intelligence play an ever-growing role, and where electronic warfare has become a major stake in modern conflicts.
Beyond software, it is also production capacity, factories, and supply chains that are changing the game, at a time when the multiplication of regional conflicts makes a large-scale war increasingly plausible. At the same time, an existential question arises: is Europe capable of producing its own weapons, on its own soil, with full control over its components?
It is in this context that we had the chance to meet Martin de Gourcuff, co-founder and CTO of Harmattan AI, but also Hadrien Canter, CEO of Alta Ares, and Arnaud Valli, Head of Public Affairs at Comand AI. Come on board with us to the heart of the “New Defense Edge” to discover these French startups at the forefront of modern conflicts.
Part 1: New rules, New players, New game
The peace dividend era is over. As global conflict intensifies and the shadow of a large-scale war has never loomed closer, Europe no longer has a choice: the time has come to rearm.
Asymmetric wars have multiplied and complicated threats (electronic warfare, drone swarms, cyber attacks), creating new challenges that traditional defense strategies struggle to address. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has provided a brutal demonstration: the most sophisticated weapons no longer guarantee victory. Drones costing a few thousand euros are destroying armored vehicles worth several millions. To quote Andrius Kubilius, European Commissioner for Defense and Space, we are now witnessing “€1M missiles facing €10,000 drones.” The conclusion is clear: the rules of the game have changed.
European defense is going through a pivotal moment, shaped by both geopolitical tensions and economic transformations. Under the constant pressure of an open war at its doorstep, and caught in the grip of Sino-American rivalry, Europe must respond. In this new paradigm, traditional defense players are less equipped to operate at the required pace, leaving considerable room for startups capable of iterating quickly and adapting to constantly evolving threats.
Harmattan AI, Alta Ares, Comand AI: the new French startups redefining the European defense landscape.
Born from this urgency to rearm, these three companies were built around the same conviction: today’s threats call for responses that traditional players cannot provide.
Cheap to produce, practically invisible to traditional radars, and capable of being deployed in massive swarms, drones create a radical asymmetry against classic interception systems, which they overwhelm as easily as they bypass. This is the problem Harmattan AI, founded in April 2024, is tackling. Initially focused on detecting anti-personnel mines (an activity it continues to develop in parallel), the startup gradually focused on drone interception, offering verticalized solutions from software to hardware. A trajectory that convinces investors: in January 2026, Harmattan raised $200 million, bringing its valuation to $1.4 billion.
Alta Ares takes a similar path, but its origin is radically different. Founded two years ago directly in Ukraine by Hadrien Canter, the startup was literally born on the front line. Its first solution, Gamma ISR, helps relieve the cognitive load of operators forced to scan video feeds for hours. The second, Pixel Lock C-UAS, powered by artificial intelligence, allows for the automatic interception of loitering munitions like Shahed drones. Validated on the Ukrainian battlefield, the technology has since been tested under extreme conditions in Estonia and validated by NATO.
Beyond counter-drone warfare, modern conflict poses another equally critical challenge: command. In environments saturated with sensors, drones, cyber signals, and OSINT, decision-makers face unprecedented volumes of data, well beyond what a human alone can process in real time. This is precisely the challenge Comand AI wanted to address. Founded by Loïc Mougeolle, former Director of Strategic Innovation at Naval Group, the startup develops military command software enabling faster decision-making by officers, along with automated after-action reviews to extract real-time lessons from operations.
Three companies, three approaches, but a shared genesis. That of a generation that chose to put its skills in service of European defense, not out of opportunism, but out of conviction. Arnaud Valli, former political advisor to NATO and now Head of Public Affairs at Comand AI, summarizes this shift: “We are right in the middle of an AI arms race, and if we are going to have effective systems, it would be better if liberal democracies had them. And I agreed with the secondary option: it would be good if Europe and France had them too.”
A sentiment shared by Martin de Gourcuff, who admits he never imagined working on defense systems: “Today, I have a much clearer sense of the purpose it serves.” At Alta Ares, this utility takes an even more concrete form. “Alta Ares is a mission-driven company,” asserts Hadrien Canter. “There are few companies today in Europe that code in the morning, and by the evening, what they coded is running on interceptor drones shooting down Shaheds. And that is a point of pride.”
Software as a lever for operational superiority
War has always been a technological accelerator. From gunpowder to the atomic bomb, from World War II radars to the drones of Mosul, every major conflict has reconfigured the relationship between innovation and military power. But something has fundamentally changed this time: the decisive advantage is no longer about tonnage or caliber. It comes down to the software layer, the one that turns an ordinary drone into a precision system, or a thirty-year-old platform into an augmented combat tool.
Beyond the robotization of the battlefield, we are now witnessing the autonomization of the entire chain, from decision-making to combat action. As Martin de Gourcuff sums it up: “We can add far more features to the defense systems we develop thanks to software and algorithmic advances, especially in machine learning. And that, in particular, makes it possible to render the systems much more autonomous than they were before.”
In a context where defense budgets do not allow everything to be replaced, and where acquisition cycles remain long, software becomes the fastest and most cost-effective lever to increase the power of existing arsenals. Software thus improves hardware, as Arnaud Valli points out: “We have systems like the T55, a tank dating back to the 50s, which is still used but is improved thanks to software. Software is not just an application overlay: it is a way to improve the hardware, to make it more competent and more effective [...]. Software is still quite decisive in today’s digitized armies, which are increasingly robotic.”
A paradigm shift in the defense industry
In a war of position like in Ukraine, this autonomization translates into a concrete operational advantage: mobilizing fewer soldiers, in a context where armies are struggling to recruit, with better-performing equipment. Above all, it provides an agility that large industrial groups are structurally incapable of offering. In Ukraine, the rules of the game evolve in a matter of weeks: jamming, fiber-optic drones, electronic countermeasures, new flight profiles. The Primes, excellent at building sophisticated systems over long cycles, find themselves outpaced by the rhythm of a war of attrition where what matters most is resilience against enemy innovation and the ability to mass-produce.
Arnaud Valli, who observed this system from the inside during his years at NATO, points out its limitations: “In France, the armed forces make a request, the DGA translates this operational need into an industrial need and asks the manufacturers to produce it. And the user hardly ever spoke to the manufacturer, except upon delivery. Which, unfortunately, sometimes resulted in absurdities between the demands of the operators and the final product.” Startups, on the other hand, operate with a different mode of functioning, often referred to as DefTech. “What does that imply? It is a much more iterative way of working, directly with the users,” specifies Arnaud Valli.
Major industrial players have clearly taken the measure of these new actors: Dassault Aviation took a stake in Harmattan AI, while Safran acquired Preligens, a French startup using AI for satellite image analysis. These moves go beyond mere financial logic: they reflect an assumed complementarity. Hadrien Canter places this dynamic in its broader context: “I think we are right in this pre-war phase, and that we have an enormous responsibility, which obliges us to have the greatest rigor in what we do. France has an important role to play in building the European defense of tomorrow. And this role can become a reality with the help of startups, but also with the help of large corporate groups.”
The awakening of institutions and private players
This realization is not limited to large manufacturers; institutions are also beginning their shift. Certain initiatives have emerged, such as the creation of the Future Combat Command (CCF) or the Defense Innovation Agency (AID), aimed at modernizing the French army and integrating startups into the Defense Technological and Industrial Base (BITD). Hadrien Canter measures its daily impact: “There is a real awareness compared to when we started two years ago. This is largely due to an organization called the Drone Pact. It is a real success; it helps us enormously to identify the right points of contact and to bridge the gap between the final need and the manufacturer. It is a link that was stretched too thin for too long, and we take great pleasure in shortening it.”
This openness also translates into concrete contracts: Harmattan AI has secured commitments with the French and British armies, a strong signal of institutional credibility acquired in barely two years of existence.
Private capital is following suit. Funds like Sisyphus Ventures or Expansion, and dedicated acceleration programs like Hexa Sprint Defense, have turned DefTech into a full-fledged asset class, where it was still taboo a few years ago. Martin de Gourcuff observes this in his own fundraising: “There has been a huge shift. Investors are much more open now to the defense industry. Many of them told us that we were the first defense company they put money into.”
The BITD is transforming. It attracts capital, talent, and a new generation of founders who would not have imagined building weapons systems five years ago. The cards are being reshuffled, and for Europe, the momentum is here. The challenge now is to transform it into the foundations of lasting sovereignty.
Partie 2 : Produce or Perish
Sovereignty is no longer an abstract concept. In a world where armed conflict is once again the norm, it refers to a concrete and brutal reality: the ability of a State to decide its own fate on its own territory, without depending on the goodwill of an ally or the supply chain of an adversary. This is exactly what Ukraine has been fighting for since February 2022, and it is precisely where the three startups we spoke with have chosen to commit themselves.
Because being “on the edge” is not a metaphor. The solutions from Alta Ares, Harmattan AI, and Comand AI are not tested in Parisian labs or German simulation centers; they are running on the front line. Alta Ares produces its interceptor drones in Ukraine, as close as possible to the units that use them. Harmattan AI and Comand AI are also deployed there. These startups do not use war as an experimental playground: they respond to real, immediate, and vital needs. Every successful interception is an impact avoided. Hadrien Canter testifies to this: “Today the results are quite good, we have already been able to shoot down more than a dozen Shaheds. And we keep counting. Every night. And we tell ourselves that every Shahed shot down is potentially a piece of critical infrastructure that is protected.”
Beyond their agility as startups and their software-oriented product design strategy, the context of high-intensity war on Europe’s doorstep has allowed these companies to test their solutions in real conditions and produce for immediate needs. “One week of development for us in Ukraine is the equivalent of two months in Germany or France,” Arnaud Valli emphasizes. This access to a massive market hungry for innovative options and products has allowed them to develop solutions that meet the needs of the Ukrainian armies for their fight, for their freedom. And more broadly, these solutions also allow Europe and European armies to prepare for future battles.
The situation in the Middle East has reinforced, with added brutality, what Ukraine had already demonstrated. Iran was one of the first States to systematize the large-scale use of low-cost drones, the Shaheds, produced for a few thousand euros, capable of inflicting considerable damage, and which cost several millions to intercept. A radical economic asymmetry, revealing a fundamental rule ignored for too long: in a war of attrition, mastering production capabilities is just as decisive as the sophistication of the systems.
The rapid depletion of missile stockpiles in the region is the starkest illustration. And while some European leaders have become aware of this reality, translating it into concrete industrial capabilities remains painfully slow. As Hadrien Canter observes: “Our adversaries understood long ago that quantity has become a quality. And unfortunately, some of our leaders have understood it, but it takes time to implement.”
Designing high-performance and autonomous systems is one thing. Producing them on a large scale, at a low cost, and without depending on foreign powers is quite another, and this is often where everything is decided. In a war of attrition, the supply chain is not a logistical detail: it is a full-fledged strategic issue. The factory has become a weapon once again. And mastering it is a condition for sovereignty.
Whoever controls their supply chain controls their destiny
This change of scale shatters Western military orthodoxy. Until now, calibrated for one-off expeditionary operations, our armies favored ultra-sophisticated systems produced in very small numbers. But once a conflict turns into a war of position, the real moat inevitably moves to the assembly line.
Survival no longer depends solely on R&D, but on the absolute primacy of physical production capacity. A brutal reality summed up by Martin de Gourcuff (Harmattan):
“In Ukraine, what makes the difference is being able to produce hundreds of thousands of units. It is not so much the intrinsic performance of the system, although obviously that helps. But performance and cost are generally highly correlated; so we end up with a fundamental trade-off to make between performance and mass.”
In a world where high intensity is becoming the norm again, mass production implies total control of the supply chain. For our Defense Tech startups, the ambition is clear, albeit complex: breaking free from the double dependency on China and the United States.
The case of the United States is particularly tricky. While they remain historical allies, protectionist tensions, exacerbated by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, are rewriting the rules. The main threat to European companies lies in the ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) compliance. The moment a single American component subject to ITAR is integrated into a system, no matter how small, the entire final product is “infected” by the standard, forcing the European company to request an export license from the US government.
On the software side, the market remains largely dominated by American tech giants. To train its models, Comand AI must source GPUs outside of China, turning to Taiwan, South Korea, or Vietnam. At Harmattan AI, which uses powerful hardware accelerators, there is currently no viable alternative to the American giant Nvidia.
At Alta Ares, strategic partnerships in Asia, particularly with Taiwan, are a deliberate choice, as Hadrien Canter explains:
“We work with Taiwan for production capacities and niche expertise, but also because they are an ally. Taiwan faces the same threat as Ukraine today, and buys French equipment. We created this company out of conviction. When we know that China supplies 75% of the electronic components for Iranian Shahed drones, why shouldn’t we provide our assistance to Taiwan?”
Wanting to relocate the entire value chain back to Europe, however, runs up against the wall of economic realities. The production of cutting-edge semiconductors requires massive investments and relies on indispensable civilian players. Arnaud Valli (Comand AI) provides a lucid assessment:
“We are dependent on civilian market structures to get our GPUs. As long as Nvidia manufactures its cards in Asia, we will be dependent. The smallest TSMC factory in the United States requires $12 billion in investment. Relocating therefore requires a strategic investment vision from the State, from data centers to production, and above all accepting, at least for a time, to produce at a loss compared to components made in Vietnam that will always be cheaper. It is a real political and industrial choice.”
Furthermore, the chain is globalized and hyper-specialized: TSMC cannot manufacture its chips without extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines from the Dutch company ASML, which holds a near-global monopoly on this technology. Europe cannot do without Taiwan, which cannot do without Europe.
While there are vast European programs to relocate the manufacturing of micro-components or batteries, the road is long. In the meantime, the hardware remains dependent on Asian or American civilian markets for cost and labor reasons. Faced with China’s hegemony over rare earths, which are essential for motor magnets, batteries, or radiofrequency systems like radars, agility is essential. French startups are expanding internationally to secure their supplies and markets: Alta Ares is forging ties in the Middle East for radar and electro-optical expertise, while Harmattan AI is expanding into Switzerland, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates.
European Defense: An unfinished puzzle
Ultimately, building a sovereign supply chain raises a much broader question: the harmonization of European defense systems. And the task is colossal.
Despite their geographical proximity, European countries think about war through the prism of their own history. A former colonial power does not project its forces in the same way as Germany, which was militarily constrained for a long time, or Poland, which lives with the Russian threat at its borders. This divergence of objectives creates an industrial fragmentation bordering on the absurd: “In Europe, there are 15 different types of tanks. In the United States, there is only one,” points out Martin de Gourcuff.
The relationship with the American nuclear umbrella is just as divisive. Driven by de Gaulle’s vision, France built a strategic autonomy unique in Europe, distinguishing itself by its ability to design its own aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and fighter jets. Constrained by a small domestic market, this model contrasts with the reality of many European neighbors, strategically and technologically vassalized by Washington.
One might have thought that recent geopolitical upheavals, up to Donald Trump’s most surreal proposals, like his idea of taking Greenland back from Denmark (by buying it or, if necessary, by force),would be a definitive wake-up call. But the inertia remains, and many Europeans still refuse to consider that their historical ally might prioritize its own interests to the detriment of those of the Old Continent. Faced with these industrial and political realities, one question remains unanswered: is European Defense condemned to be nothing more than a chimera?
Part 3: Hardcoding the Red Line
The sovereignty imperative goes far beyond simply mastering hardware components. Today, the true frontline lies in the adoption of artificial intelligence within our defense systems. While the technical and strategic challenges are vast, the most pressing questions remain ethical in nature and fundamentally entangled with the growing autonomy of our arsenals.
Many whistleblowers are raising concerns about the rapid development of AI. Could an artificial intelligence with amplified capabilities become a systemic threat to humanity? While these narratives echo the most famous works of science fiction, the concerns are real and voiced by leading figures in the ecosystem itself. In a recent essay, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, clearly outlines the threats posed by AI if it is militarized without safeguards: the risk of a hostile nation achieving military dominance or launching large-scale cyberattacks, the appropriation of these tools by terrorist groups to multiply their destructive capacity, or the concentration of absolute power in the hands of dictators.
Described as “patriotic” by Arnaud Valli, this essay is a strike warning against the potential excesses of defense AI, but also raises deep philosophical questions. Martin de Gourcuff shares that wariness, and confirms that there is no such thing as zero-risk when dealing with fully autonomous systems:
“LLMs provide access to a vast body of knowledge and open up a wide range of possibilities. Unfortunately, it is a technology that can be used for harmful purposes. How worried should we be? I’m not entirely sure. But we must not forget that this tool is not fundamentally constrained to do good.”
In this context, a key question emerges: does the growing implementation of AI in Defense inherently represent a risk?
The startup paradox: more AI for more ethics?
When it comes to weaponry, AI primarily translates into autonomy. While automated systems (drones, missiles) have existed for decades, the current robotization of the battlefield marks a new step forward. Yet for our startups, the conclusion is unanimous and almost counterintuitive: controlled automation enables a level of efficiency and performance that strengthens the ethics of strikes.
In practice, this plays out in one concrete advantage: video feedback from autonomous drones makes strikes reversible. Where launching a traditional missile is irreversible, an interceptor drone strike can be canceled up to the final five seconds. Hadrien Canter recalls a tragedy that could have been avoided:
“When pro-Russian separatists and Russian armed forces shot down civilian flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014, they believed they were targeting a Ukrainian military aircraft. [...] Today, when a drone is launched to intercept a target, if we realize that the radar lock was actually on a friendly or civilian drone, video feedback allows us to cancel the strike at the last second.”
Harmattan AI takes the argument one step further: specialization itself is the safeguard. “We are developing Gobi, a drone interceptor. Unless we modify its code, it can never be used to target civilians. From that perspective, it is almost more secure than a traditional anti-aircraft gun, which can easily be turned against anyone,” explains Martin de Gourcuff.
Automation is not limited to deploying swarms of drones; it relies on the resilience of communication networks to operate a global command and control (C2) system, similar to the American Combined JADC2 program. However, Arnaud Valli points out the fragility of this hyper-connectivity: “This connectivity can always be compromised, even if Starlink or other constellations make 5G available everywhere.” To what extent can armed forces rely on cloud availability in the middle of combat?
What makes this automation inevitable is a single imperative: accelerating the Kill Chain, the sequence of processing a target. The goal is to drastically reduce the time between detecting the enemy and neutralizing it.
“The Russians have improved their detection-recognition-strike system in a very impressive way: previously, it took them five minutes to identify and destroy a target, now it’s under 30 seconds,” notes Arnaud Valli.
AI is revolutionizing targeting, even reshaping the economics of war, as observed through the Iranian conflict. “During the first strikes [recent ones in the Middle East], there may have been 1,000 strikes managed by only around a hundred analysts… That is 100 times fewer personnel than during the Gulf War, for four times as many strikes. When applied to data aggregation, this multiplier effect is terrifying. But ultimately, it does not win a war on its own,” tempers Arnaud Valli.
The “Human-in-the-loop” and the wall of operational reality
Despite these advances, operational safety is only guaranteed if humans remain in the decision-making loop. AI helps reduce the operator’s cognitive load by filtering information. “AI provides suggestions, but humans remain at the core of the decision-making process,” insists Hadrien Canter.
Technically, autonomous defense systems face the same limitations as autonomous vehicles: handling rare events. Martin de Gourcuff illustrates this challenge:
“If a monkey crosses the road in front of our car, we understand the situation. The algorithm, however, does not: it either misidentifies the obstacle or makes a poor decision because its training data contains very few instances of monkeys crossing roads.”
These perceptual limitations, combined with sensor constraints (sunlight, hallucinations…), slow down the development of fully autonomous systems, even though technologies such as World Models aim to address them. Hadrien Canter sets the record straight regarding tech-driven fantasies: “While some competing companies oversell a futuristic vision where everything works at the push of a button… operational reality is very different. There is noise in the data, sensors get jammed. Human lives are at stake, and that must not be forgotten.”
Beyond the technical dimension, automation raises deeply political questions. Arnaud Valli highlights the risk of desensitization to war:
“It is clear that systems are becoming increasingly autonomous, with humans simply ‘turning the key’ because they can no longer compute everything. But if China were to deploy a fleet of robots in the Pacific against a US fleet, would there not be far less political and social resistance to initiating a conflict, knowing that there are no direct human casualties?”
The uncomfortable truth is that hostile powers aren’t waiting for a consensus on the ethics of autonomous warfare, they’re already fielding it, pushing Western armed forces toward an essential doctrinal renewal. Who, human or machine, is legally responsible for an autonomous strike? What delegated authorities to open fire are permitted? It is along this narrow tactical and moral backbone that Defense Tech must evolve. “Our companies must work with the military, but also with theorists, to build a clear, defined framework capable of evolving,” concludes Arnaud Valli.
Part 4: The war of tomorrow is being shaped today
As institutional trust strengthens and private capital finally opens up to Defense Tech, the time for mere proof of concept is over. For these startups, the ambition goes beyond providing isolated technological building blocks: the goal is to establish themselves as the backbone of tomorrow’s armed forces.
The ultimate objective? To become the central infrastructure, the global operating system of European defense. A direct response to American technological ambitions, such as the highly interconnected Combined JADC2 military program. Martin de Gourcuff confirms this desire to be at the core of the system: “There is real value in being at the heart of the data system. It is fully aligned with our ambition to build the operating system for command centers, the data infrastructure, and the communication systems of armed forces.”
To summarize this pursuit of interoperability and software dominance, Arnaud Valli offers a striking metaphor:
“Why do you think American Defense Tech giants use names drawn from Tolkien’s universe, like Palantir or Anduril? It’s one to rule them all. [...] In an ideal world, we would want a piece of software connected to everyone. The goal, within a European ecosystem, is to reach several billion in revenue. If we manage to shake up how procurement agencies operate in favor of end users, we will have achieved a great deal.”
This software sovereignty must also enable Europe to compensate for the shortcomings of its historical allies. Hadrien Canter sees this as a strong strategic signal: when the United States runs out of stock and can no longer supply Patriot missiles, the emergence of France and its ecosystem with agile and effective interception solutions shifts the balance on the global geopolitical chessboard.
But to turn this vision into reality and establish the continent’s security architecture, money and political will alone will not suffice. The true decisive factor of this decade will be human. “Join us to build concrete solutions and have an impact. There is work to be done, we are looking for motivated people committed to this mission-driven mindset,” says Hadrien Canter as a general call to action. The message is clear: tomorrow’s European sovereignty urgently needs the best talent of today.
Closing words
Writing this article opened our eyes to a world most of us instinctively turn away from: Defense, its mechanisms, its realities. A world opaque, sometimes uncomfortable but more urgent to understand than ever.
Because tomorrow’s threat may not yet have a name, but already exists. And while we look away, entire teams are coding, testing, iterating, sometimes just a few kilometers from the front line, so that Europe can defend itself in a world that did not wait for us to become hostile.
We thank Martin, Hadrien, and Arnaud for opening the doors of their offices to us. And we thank them even more now that we fully grasp the fight they carry every day, to protect the sovereignty of peoples. A fight that, ultimately, concerns us all.
If you enjoyed this edition, please consider sharing it with a colleague or friend who wants to understand how geopolitics and tech intertwine.
Best,
Agathe & Emma