The Sunday Investigation. The German start-up Helsing wants to equip the EU armies with sovereign drones boosted with AI. “Le Point” is the first French media to have visited its workshops.
March 2026, somewhere in southern Germany. We get into a black van waiting for us near the station; the specific destination is not communicated to us. Forty minutes later, we arrive in front of a large slightly worn building, which we are not authorized to describe. Inside, like in the most sensitive places of the armies, the doors are identified with numeric codes, not by people’s or service names, to make it difficult for potential spies.
“Le Point” is the first French media to have been allowed to visit the European defense start-up Helsing’s drone factory. Here, they produce the AI-boosted HX-2 tandem warheads, kind of “super-Shahed,” more effective but also more expensive than the Iranian-made drones, launched by the thousands on Ukraine from Russia.
We enter a large room where a slogan dominates four assembly lines: “Protecting our democracies.” The same mold that intrigued the visitors at the 2025 Paris Air Show, during which Helsing announced a fundraising of 600 million euros, making its valuation over 12 billion: a record for a European defense start-up.
On the high-tech workbenches, about ten workers are busy juggling with drone parts placed in numbered baskets, and tools all neatly arranged in a precise location. Each element is tracked: “I can tell which screw was used for which drone, but also which screwdriver was used to screw it in. Thus, if we realize that a batch of parts or a tool is defective, we can recall only the drones concerned,” congratulates Michael Schwekutsch, vice president of Helsing in charge of physical products – as opposed to software and services.
Context: The article describes the insider visit to the European defense start-up Helsing’s drone factory in Germany, highlighting its advanced technology production and security measures.
Fact Check: The article discusses the innovative production processes and AI integration in drones, emphasizing the company’s focus on quality control and security measures in the manufacturing process.
