The VCs are known to move around in the herds, which is why Eric Slesinger stands out a bit. While most American investors are pursuing AI startups or defense technological startups in the United States, the former CIA officer is looking for technological defense agreements in Europe. In fact, Slesinger, founder of 201 venturesRecently closed a 22 million dollars fund on startups in European defense technology at the seed stadium. Its path of development of gadgets and software for CIA agents to perhaps become the only American VC which invests exclusively in European defense technology also seems to be premonitory.
What would force someone to leave “the best first work of all time” at the CIA to continue this specific ambition? As Slesinger said to Techcrunch in a recent Strictlyvc Download the Podcast InterviewThe answer came from the identification of a critical change that many missed. “I left because I noticed that the private sector played a role in this competition more and more in this competition that I had previously understood to be a government of government competition,” said Slesinger. “What has become obvious more, every day is that the private sector played such a big role here.”
With Stanford diplomas in mechanical engineering and the Harvard Business School, the history of Slesinger helped him fill the gap between defense technology and commercial companies. But it is his desire to go against conventional wisdom that made him interesting for investors, founders and technological journalists even.
“I always liked going where other people tend not to want to go,” said Slesinger. “This is why I appreciated the work of the CIA so much. Two things that people said was:” Come on where others are not going and do what they cannot do. “”
As for what we miss to the VC, from the point of view of Slesinger, there were three things. First, “Europe has individual entrepreneurs who are just as hungry, just as high and just as intelligent as everywhere else in the world.” Second, “European governments have waited for too long to rethink what the arrangement meant on their own security, and therefore did not actually take a critical eye.” And thirdly, “Europe was quickly seen and, in my opinion, will continue to be the site of a serious gray zone competition”, which means state activities or non -state actors that are between traditional peace and pure and simple war.
The most surprising aspect of the European company of Slesinger may have been the cultural resistance he says that he had encountered concern for defense. In 2022, after having moved from the United States to Madrid, he launched the European Defense Investor Network, which now includes entrepreneurs, investors and decision-makers. In 2023 Medium postSlesinger wrote about how his European colleagues in VC were afraid of talking about their defense -related investments. Unlike America, he told Techcrunch, the defense that technology investing in Europe “was considered to be rude, something that should be done but that has not spoken, and certainly not speaking in polished company at the dinner table.” (Slesinger quickly added: “I am a little exaggerated, but there is a core of truth there.”)
He says that cultural hesitation has brought “many founders to think about it, deciding not to build a business in the [defense] Space. “Now it changes.
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The attention has also attracted to emerging defense technology startups on the continent, notably Helsing, based in Munich, which develops AI for use on battlefields and is currently evaluated at more than $ 5 billion by its investors. Delian Alliance Industries, an attire based in Athens developing Athens surveillance towers developing autonomous threats. Delian has so far high Seed financing But it is a hot ticket which is surely actively courted by VCs.
With eight investments to date, 201 ventures focuses on technologies that meet this competition in the gray area because, in Slesinger’s words, this “occurs on a large scale in Europe, and it will do it for the next two decades”. These market dislocations, he said, “whether they are price ineffectiveness or a government playing a more important role in a market that it could otherwise, if not to want a sovereign capacity … These dislocations of the gray area are in fact a good form of alpha.”
In addition to Delian, another of Slesinger’s bets is Polar Mist, a Swedish startup producing maritime drones with advanced navigation capacities. The other areas of intervention include hypersonia and underground cartography.
A challenge in the financing of defense technological startups is the longer development calendar compared to traditional venture capital investments. Slesinger recognized this tension in his conversation with Techcrunch: “If you have a 10 -year life cycle in escape, it is a real thing that we have to do things to try to accelerate or lean a little.”
Slesinger also thinks that “European companies should do more lobbying at stages much earlier”.
The two raise questions about the question of whether his bet will pay for investors. At the same time, its early vision of a more autonomous European defense ecosystem becomes clearer for many other investors today as geopolitical tensions increase and Europe rethinks its security arrangements.
The data published earlier this year by the NATO innovation fund and the research group’s access room showed that European startups working on defense and related technology increased 24% capital more in 2024 than in 2023, striking $ 5.2 billion – even go beyond the financing of the AI. President Donald Trump is back in office in January and questioned the commitment of the United States to European defense, this figure is likely to climb even more.
