Why Every Tech Company Is Suddenly Claiming to Be a Defence Company

From drone makers to AI firms to satellite companies, European tech startups are pivoting to defence contracts. Here is the money behind the transformation and the ethical debate it's generating.

The conversation in European tech circles has shifted in the past two years with a speed that has surprised even people who track these things closely. The ethical debate about whether technology companies should work with military and defence institutions — which dominated the discourse in Silicon Valley from 2018 onward and which had significant European resonance — has been largely overtaken by a new consensus: that in a world where Russia is actively at war in Europe, European technology companies have both an economic interest and arguably a civic obligation to contribute to defence capability.

The venture capital flowing toward European defence tech startups in 2025-26 has reached levels that would have been unimaginable three years ago. Tikehau Capital's defence-focused fund, BOKA's military technology portfolio, and dozens of smaller vehicles have raised billions of euros for deployment into companies working on drones, electronic warfare, satellite intelligence, battlefield AI, and autonomous systems.

The companies attracting this capital include both genuinely dual-use firms — companies whose technology has obvious civilian applications and whose defence applications are a profitable extension — and pure-play defence startups that have been founded specifically to serve the military procurement market that European governments are suddenly willing to pay significant prices to access.

The ethical debate that has not disappeared but has been significantly muted involves the question of which applications of technology are acceptable even in a defence context. AI systems that assist with logistics and communications are broadly accepted. AI systems that make autonomous targeting decisions are deeply controversial. Drone delivery systems that can be converted to weapons platforms occupy an ambiguous middle ground. European startup founders are navigating these distinctions with varying degrees of explicitness and in a regulatory environment that is still developing.