Defense tech's borrowed clock

Anduril Industries closed a $5bn Series H on Wednesday at a $61bn valuation, doubling the figure it set eleven months ago. Days earlier the Financial Times reported that Helsing, a Munich-based defense-AI company founded in 2021, was advancing on a $1.2bn round at $18bn, its third up-round in less than two years. The pair are now the unambiguous flagships of Western defense tech, one American, one European, both wired into their respective militaries. The contracts underneath the cap tables have not moved at the same speed.

Place Anduril next to the public comparables and it trades like Palantir, not like Lockheed. That is the multiple of enterprise software, applied to a customer whose procurement runs on multi-year cycles, depends on congressional appropriations, and demands a working demonstrator before signing a framework. Helsing at $18bn on undisclosed revenue leaves the implied multiple to imagination.