American VC is betting on European defense technology; This is still very unusual

It is known that VCS moves in herds, which is why Eric Slesinger is slightly protruding. While most American investors are chasing startups AI or startups for defense technology in the United States, the former CIA officer is looking for defensive technical deals in Europe. In fact, slesinger, founder 201 projectsHe recently closed a $ 22 million fund, focusing on emerging companies in the European Defense Defense. It seems that its way to develop tools and programs for CIA agents to become the only only Americans to invest in European defense technology, it also seems to be specific.

What forces someone to leave the “best job ever” at the CIA to follow up on this specified ambition? He also told Slesinger Techcrunch in an interview Strictlyvc Download interview podcastThe answer came from the determination of a decisive transformation that many missed. “I left because I noticed that the private sector was increasingly playing a role in this competition, which I really understood to be a government of government competition,” explained Slesiner. “What has become more clear, every day is that the private sector was playing a big role here.”

With degrees of Stanford in Mechanical Engineering and Harvard Business College, the Slesinger background helped prepare to fill the gap between defense technology and commercial projects. But his willingness to confront the traditional wisdom that made him interesting for investors and founders and Technology correspondents both.

“I have always enjoyed going to where others tend to be unwilling to go,” said Slesiner. “This is why I enjoyed working at the CIA a lot. There are two things that people are used to there,” Go to where others do not go and do what they cannot do. “

As for what VCS was for us, from the point of Slesinger, there were three things. First, “Europe has individual entrepreneurs who feel hungry, with the same amount of condemnation, just like anywhere in the world.” Second, “European governments have waited for a long time to rethink the meaning of arrangement on their security, and therefore did not actually take critical attention towards it.” And thirdly, “it appeared in Europe quickly and will remain, in my opinion, a site for serious competition for the gray region”, and this means activities by the actors in the state or other countries that fall between traditional peace and explicit war.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the European Slesinger project is the cultural resistance he says has faced with regard to defense investments. In 2022, after moving from the United States to Madrid, the European Defense Investors Network, which now includes entrepreneurs, investors and policy makers. In 2023 MediumSlesinger wrote about how his European colleagues fear VC from talking about their defense investments. Unlike America, he told Techcrunch that investing in Defeense Tech in Europe “was seen as unreliable, something that should be done but not talking about, and certainly did not talk about it in the polite company at the dinner table.” (Slesinger quickly added, “I am a little exaggeration, but there is a nucleus of the truth there.”)

He says that the cultural frequency resulted in “many of the founders who think about the matter, and decided not to build a company in the (defense) area.” Now this is changing. The NATO Fund for Innovation-the first multi-organized investment capital fund in the world, helped with the support of 24 allies in NATO and was launched in the summer of 2022 after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war-. In fact, he is an important supporter of 201 projects.

So, he won the attention of startups in the field of defense technology on the continent, including Munich -based Helsing, which develops artificial intelligence 5 billion dollars By investors. Another was in the Slesins’s portfolio is Delance Industries, a monitoring group based in Athens to develop the monitoring towers to discover independent threats. I have raised Dolian so far Seed financing But it is a hot ticket that is definitely wrapped by VCS.

With eight investments so far, 201 Ventures focuses on the technologies that deal with that competition in the gray region because, in the words of Slesixer, “it is widely happening in Europe, and will work over the next two decades.” He said that this market removal, “whether it is inefficiency in prices or a government that plays a greater role in a market that may be otherwise, if not due to a sovereign capacity … These turmoil in the gray region is in fact a good form of alpha.”

In addition to Delian, other stakes of Slesinger are Polar Mist, a Swedish startup that produces marine marine aircraft with advanced mobility capabilities. Other concentration areas include a lack of drawing in the graph and the sub -surface maps.

One of the challenges is to finance startups in the field of defense technology to the timeline of development compared to the traditional investments of the decades. Slesinger admitted this tension in his conversation with Techcrunch: “If you have a 10 -year life cycle, this is a real thing that we must do for things to try to accelerate or bend a little.”

Slesiner also believes that “European companies should do more pressure in early stages.”

Both of them raise questions about whether a gambling will take fruits for investors. At the same time, his early vision of the ecosystem of European defense is the most independent independent of many other investors these days with high geopolitical tensions and Europe rethinking its security arrangements.

The data published earlier this year by the NATO Innovation Fund and the Group of Research showed that European startups working on defense and relevant technology collected 24 % larger capital in 2024 compared to 2023, and hitting 5.2 billion dollars Exaggeration of artificial intelligence. With President Donald Trump’s return to his post in January and suspicion of the United States’ commitment to European defense, this number is likely to rise.