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NEWS Helsing unveils unmanned fighter Last week I covered Lockheed’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), and I have previously written about China’s wingman drones which were unveiled at its military parade three weeks ago. Now Helsing, a German neoprime, has unveiled a “design study” for its uncrewed combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), comparable to the wingman drones developed by Anduril and General Atomics in the US. It has apparently been in development for three and a half months. For Helsing this is a break with its regular product focus, which has been to develop smaller scale autonomous platforms. That, in turn, was a break from its previous focus, which was to improve existing defence products with AI (such as the Saab Gripen fighter jet). As China and the US have signalled, wingman drones are likely to form an important part of future air capability. For Helsing to justify its valuation it must increasingly go head-to-head with the primes it sought to collaborate with. It will be interesting to see which other domains it considers fair game. HSBC claims ‘Sputnik moment’ for quantum HSBC claimed it had achieved a ‘Sputnik moment’ for quantum computing. The British bank said that a pilot deploying a quantum processor built by IBM had yielded a 34% improvement in predicting how likely a bond would trade at a given price. The trial used IBM’s Heron quantum processor, along with classical models. The media reception has treated this as a significant milestone, but it’s important to note that the result was achieved on historical data, not in live trading. I wrote recently that there isn’t a useful quantum computer yet. That is still true, but this type of demonstration is a nice indicator of where and how the technology might achieve its breakthrough applications. There will be no ChatGPT for quantum, but I think the implications of the mature technology will be no less important than for AI. Ukrainian company develops Shahed drone A Ukrainian startup has created its own version of Iran’s Shahed drone. The Shahed design looks like it will become ubiquitous, after Russia, then Venezuela and even the US have adopted it as the low-cost design of choice. This Ukrainian version is jet powered, which is a copy of the Russian adaptation of the Shahed, the Geran-3. The Iranian Shahed drones are in fact replicas themselves, tracing their ancestry to 1980s Germany. Aircraft manufacturer Dornier created the DAR (Die Drohne Antiradar), a radar-hunting drone. It even had the same launch mechanism as a Shahed. Thus far Russia has largely copied Ukrainian defence tech (with the notable exception of the fibre-optic drone, which was a Russian innovation). Now Ukraine is looking to use this tactic to its own advantage. FUNDRAISING Synthesized, a British/American developer of AI to automate software testing, raised a $20m Series A round led by Redalpine Venture Partners. Synthesized is an Expeditions portfolio company. Commcrete, an Israeli startup that develops handheld satellite communication systems for defense, emergency, and security teams, raised a $21m Series A round led by Greenfield Partners. Mimica, a British startup that uses process intelligence to help enterprises train and operate AI agents, raised a $26.2m Series B round led by Paladin Capital Group. NanoQT, a Japenese developer of a novel room-temperature quantum computer, raised a $14m Series A led by Phoenix Venture Partners and others. delta.g, a British developer of quantum sensing technology, raised a £4.6m seed round led by Serendipity Capital. Rendezvous Robotics, an American startup focused on in-space assembly, emerged from stealth and raised a $3m pre-seed round co-led by Aurelia Foundry and 8090 Industries. Akashalabdhi, an Indian company developing expandable space habitats and dual use defense technologies, raised a $1.2m pre-seed round.
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