€1bn in Defence Contracts: Europe’s Hard Commit

THE HARD COMMIT • CONTRACTS OF THE WEEK

The deal: The European Commission said on 2 December 2025 that it is signing a new series of grant agreements for the European Defence Fund (EDF) 2024 winners, formally kicking off 62 collaborative defence R&D projects backed by close to €1 billion in EU funding. 

The portfolio: Includes everything from fast-moving defence tech priorities, including air and missile defence, drones and counter-drone capabilities, AI, quantum technologies, and military mobility, with participation from more than 600 entities across EU member states and Norway.

For European defence-tech startups, this shows a clear signal of where Brussels sees the next wave of capability gaps and market opportunities emerging. That place is Defence.

➔ Learn more about the grant breakdowns for the 4 defence programmes

Pulsar Fusion, a firm in Bletchley (UK), has won an 18-month contract from the European Space Agency (ESA).

The deal: The ESA, alongside the UK Space Agency, will provide €500,000 to prepare Pulsar’s 500W engines for flight.

The technology: Hall-effect thrusters replace heavy chemical fuel. They use electricity to ionise gas, creating a steady push that allows satellites to steer. This saves weight and extends missions, a requirement for the $1.5bn market for servicing satellites.

Pulsar’s test proves the hardware is ready for sale.

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DEEP TECH OPEN • DEFENCE

Operating under the theme "To be ready. Together," this high-level conference focuses on delivering European defence readiness for 2030. It will bring together Defence Ministers, NATO officials, and industry leaders alongside Kaja Kallas (Head of the EDA) and André Denk (Chief Executive of the EDA).

➔ Registration closes on December 19, 2025.

​​The mission continues: at the same time as the Munich Security Conference, we'll be organising once again Europe's largest defence tech hackathon. Join us and 200+ hackers from all across Europe and beyond for the European Defence Tech Hackathon on February 12-15, 2026, in Munich.

​​Connect with fellow defence innovators, find a co-founder, and develop solutions that will eventually save lives!

SPARTA is Europe’s premier defence innovation marketplace at MSC 2026. While defence investment surges, it often reinforces legacy systems. SPARTA bridges this gap, offering purpose-built matchmaking for primes, SMEs, startups, and armed forces to catalyse 100 next-gen commercial partnerships.

Key Attendees:

➔ Apply for an invitation. Accepted applicants secure the option to meet a highly curated crowd in confidential 1:1s.

MSC has brought together global decision-makers in Munich since 1963. Earlier this year, U.S. Vice President JD Vance delivered a stunning speech that many considered a wake-up call for Europe. This will make MSC 2026 especially worth attending.

Enforce Tac is a trade show that focuses on both defence and internal security (law enforcement). Its 2025 edition broke records with 9,000 visitors and 1,000 exhibitors. These include international startups, which can now apply to present themselves at the “startups@Enforce Tac” pavilion in 2026.

TECHNOLOGY DEEP-DIVE

Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) satellites are becoming one of the most decisive layers of modern defence, changing how states see, understand, and act in near-real time. Beyond communications and navigation, ISR constellations, especially in low Earth orbit, now provide persistent monitoring of troop movements, maritime activity, missile-related infrastructure, and critical supply chains. 

Militaries are shifting from a handful of exquisite, high-cost platforms to proliferated networks of smaller satellites that offer resilience, faster revisit times, and rapid tasking. This reflects a shift among defence planners: space-based sensing is no longer a niche capability for a few governments, but a frontline asset central to deterring aggression, preventing strategic surprise, and enabling faster targeting, battle-damage assessment, and crisis response.

Startups are at the core of this transformation. Companies like ICEYE in synthetic aperture radar (SAR), Capella Space and Umbra in high-performance SAR imaging, Planet and BlackSky in high-cadence optical monitoring, and HawkEye 360 in radio-frequency geolocation are building complementary layers of a new ISR ecosystem. Their focus is not just on building satellites but on delivering end-to-end ISR services that include tasking, collection, automated analytics, and rapid delivery of insights to operators. 

The trend is toward “multi-int” constellations that combine SAR, optical, RF, and AI-enabled exploitation to shorten the sensor-to-shooter loop. In an era of contested space and grey-zone competition, this commercial agility and constellation-based resilience are becoming as strategically important as traditional government programmes.

For founders and engineers, the message is straightforward: the space race is back, and this time, defence startups are part of it. 🚀

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

Zero Industries is an emerging European defence startup developing navigation systems that allow drones to operate without GPS, a growing requirement on modern battlefields. 

Founded by aerospace engineers Frederico Baptista, João Gonçalo Silva, and Álvaro Patricio, the company began as a student project before gaining early recognition at the EDTH Warsaw Hackathon. 

Now backed by Project Europe and Heartfelt VC, Zero Industries is working with European drone manufacturers to deliver both hardware–software modules and software-only integrations designed to keep unmanned systems operational in GPS-denied environments.

Skynopy is a French spacetech startup founded in 2023 that offers "connectivity as a service" for LEO satellite operators, simplifying access to satellite ground infrastructure.

After pitching at the DTM100 Space Pitch Competition in May 2025, the team momentum has been relentless. Following a €15m Series A, they have now secured a major operational win.

The French Defence Innovation Agency (AID) has selected Skynopy to launch SkyFortress.

SkyFortress utilises Skynopy’s hybrid network of ground stations to ensure resilience. If a station is jammed, cyber-attacked, or physically compromised, the system automatically reroutes the link—guaranteeing that France maintains command and control of its space assets in contested environments.

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