BAE-backed Expeditions raises €197M fund for European defence startups
Expeditions, the Warsaw-based venture firm backed by BAE Systems and the NATO Innovation Fund, has closed a €197m ($225m) fund to back the next wave of European defence startups.
The raise caps a boom that has seen defence prime BAE commit €50M to outside VCs and venture capital pour into the continent’s defence tech at record speed.
The vehicle, Expeditions Fund II, overshot an earlier €150m target, boosted by BAE’s €25m cheque. The firm plans to deploy the capital across as many as 40 early-stage companies building technologies with, in its words, immediate operational relevance to Europe’s critical capability gaps.
Expeditions frames its thesis around sovereignty. The goal, it says, is to develop military technologies that Europe can build and control itself, rather than importing them, as the continent scrambles to close capability gaps exposed by the war in Ukraine.
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