AI Startup Roundup: Defense AI firm Helsing raises $223 Million

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Helsing

Munich-based Helsing is a startup building AI technologies for the defense market. Helsing is building AI-enabled electronic warfare capabilities for the upcoming Eurofighter jet.

The startup also secured a contract to provide the AI backbone for the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) program - which is building underlying systems for future European fighter jets.

Helsing has provided capabilities and technology for frontline operations in the war in Ukraine.

Latest funding: $223 million, series B

Lead investor: General Catalyst

Other investors: Saab

Funding plans: Helsing intends to use the new capital to further grow its businesses in France, Germany and the U.K., and deepen its investments in its core technology initiatives.

Writer

San Francisco-based Writer is a generative AI platform that lets users create content using AI. Writer allows enterprise users to summarize large documents, write marketing copy and generate product descriptions.

Writer offers prebuilt templates, chatbots, integrations and APIs - with the likes of  L’Oréal SA, Spotify and Uber among the companies using its offerings.

Latest funding: $100 million, series B

Lead investor: ICONIQ Growth

Other investors: Accenture, Insight Partners, WndrCo, Balderton Capital, Vanguard and Aspect Venture

Funding plans: Writer plans to develop industry-specific large language models, AI agents and enterprise-focused multi-modality models with an eye on expanding its presence internationally.

Pryon

Raleigh, N.C.-based Pryon is the developer of an AI-enhanced, multimodal knowledge management platform for the public and private sectors. The startup’s founders were the minds behind Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and IBM’s Watson.

Latest funding: $100 million, series B

Lead investor: Thomas Tull’s U.S. Innovative Technology Fund

Other investors: Aperture Venture Capital, BootstrapLabs, Breyer Capital, Duke Capital Partners, Good Growth Capital, Omnimed Capital, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, and others.

Funding plans: Accelerate its growth, augment its team, expand into international markets and scale strategic partnerships.

Alcion

Santa Clara-based Alcion is a data management startup that offers AI security platforms. Its offering is designed to help Microsoft 365 administrators protect data from cyber threats and accidental data loss.

Latest funding: $21 million, series A

Lead investor: Veeam

Angel investors: Lip-Bu Tan, chair at Walden International; Debanjan Saha, managing director of DataRobot; serial investor Amarjit Gill; and Abhinav Asthana, CEO of Postman

Funding plans: The newly raised funds support the general availability of Alcion’s security-first AI-driven Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform for Microsoft 365.

KYP.ai

German startup KYP.ai offers a plug-and-play cloud platform that provides data-driven insights for process automation. The Productivity 360 platform provides visibility at scale across all business software platforms and systems, generating real-time insights to boost productivity.

Latest funding: $18.6 million, series A

Lead investor: OTB Ventures

Other investors: 42CAP, Tola Capital

Funding plans: The new funding will support KYP’s ambitions to scale its operations in the U.S. as well as deepen its customer base and operations in Europe, India, Singapore and China.