Daniel Ek. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Prima Materia, the investment company co-founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek, is leading a €600 million investment in Helsing, a Munich-based company creating drones and artificial intelligence for military operations, the Financial Times reports. It brings the company’s current valuation to €12 billion.
Helsing was initially a software company founded in 2021 by Torsten Reil, a former gaming executive, A.I. researcher Niklas Köhler, and Gundbert Scherf, former special adviser to Germany’s military of defense. Ek’s initial investment of €100 million came soon after the company’s launch. Helsing’s profile grew exponentially after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine; in a 2023 Wired profile, Reil said the company was “quite involved” in Ukraine’s military operations.
The company’s corporate slogan at the time was “AI to serve democracies,” Wired reported, and they claimed to never sell to autocratic countries. However, the publication did not receive an answer from Helsing when they asked if they would sell their products to countries that “where governments have stripped judges of their independence and cracked down on LGBTQ rights.”
A chairman on Helsing’s board, Ek told the Times Prima Materia would be “doubling down” on its investment in 2025 as Helsing expands from software to machines, including drones, aircrafts, and submarines. “The world is being tested in more ways than ever before,” Ek said. “There’s an enormous realisation that it’s really now AI, mass and autonomy that is driving the new battlefield… We can’t understate the implications of that for this conflict [in Ukraine] or really any conflict going forward.”
Ek faced backlash after his initial investment in Helsing was revealed, with some calling for a boycott of Spotify. This time, Ek seemed unconcerned about any blowback.
“I’m sure people will criticize it and that’s OK. Personally, I’m not concerned about it. I focus more on doing what I think is right and I am 100 per cent convinced that this is the right thing for Europe.”
