It is known that VC moves in herds, which is why Eric Slesinger stands out a bit. While most American investors are chasing AI start-ups or defense technology startups based in the USA, a former CIA officer talks about technological offers in Europe. In fact, Slesinger, founder 201 venturesHe has recently closed a fund value $ 22 million focused on European defense technology start-ups. His path from developing gadgets and software for CIA agents to turn into perhaps the only American VC investing only in European defense technology also appears to be prophecy.
What would force someone to go away the “best first work in history” in the CIA to understand this particular ambition? As Slesinger TechCrunch said in a recent one Podcast strictlyvc podcastThe answer got here from identifying a critical change, which many missed. “I left because I noticed that the private sector is increasingly playing a role in this competition, which I previously understood that it is a government in government competition,” explained Slesinger. “It was more obvious that the private sector played such a big role here.”
Thanks to the stages from Stanford in mechanical engineering and Harvard Business School, Slesinger’s background helped him prepare to fill the gap between defense technology and industrial projects. But it was his readiness for conventional wisdom that made him interesting for investors, founders and Technology reporters each.
“I’ve always liked walking where other people don’t want to go,” said Slesinger. “That’s why I liked working in CIA so much. A few things that people said there was:” Go where others don’t go and do what they cannot. “
As for what VC missed, there have been three things from Slesinger’s standpoint. First of all: “Europe has individual entrepreneurs who are equally hungry, equally high belief and as wise as anywhere else in the world.” Secondly: “European governments have been waiting too long to think about, which meant agreement on their own security, and therefore did not really turn to it.” Thirdly: “Europe was quickly seen and in my opinion it will still be a place of serious competition in the gray zone”, which implies state or non -state activities that decrease between traditional peace and the overt war.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Slesinger’s European undertaking was cultural resistance, which, he claims, met with defensive investments. In 2022, after moving from the US to Madrid, he founded a European network of defense investors, which currently includes entrepreneurs, investors and decision -makers. In 2023 Medium postSlesinger wrote about how his European colleagues VC were afraid to speak about their defense investments. Unlike America, Techcrunch said, investing defense technology in Europe “was seen as indefat, something to do, but not to talk, and certainly was not said in a polite company at the table.” (Slesinger quickly added: “I’m exaggerating a bit, but there is a test of truth”).
He says that cultural fluctuations led to “many founders of this thinking, deciding not to build a company in [defense] space. “Now it is changing.
Thus, attention is paid to the upcoming defensive technological startups on the continent, including Helsing from Munich, which develops artificial intelligence for use in battlefields and is currently valued by investors over $ 5 billion. Another player in Slesinger’s portfolio is Delian Alliance Industries, an outfit developed by Athens, developing supervision towers to detect autonomous threats. Until now, Delian has raised Seed financing But it is a hot ticket that is actually actively abandoned by VCS.
With eight investments so far 201 Ventures has focused on technologies that relate to Gray Zone competition, because, with the words of Slesinger, “is happening on a scale in Europe, and will be for the next few decades.” These dislocations of the market said: “Regardless of whether they are price ineffectiveness or the government play a greater role on the market, that otherwise it may have it not been for the desire to sovereign ability … These gray zone dislocations are a good form of alpha.”
In addition to Delian, the next Slesinger is Polar fogSwedish startup producing sea drones with advanced navigation capabilities. Other areas of concentration include hippisersonics and sub -pair mapping.
One of the challenges related to the financing of the START -Defense Technology is a longer development time of development in comparison with traditional investments of undertakings. Slesinger awarded this tension from TechCrunch: “If you have a 10-year financing life cycle, it is a real thing that we have to do things to accelerate or bend a little.”
Slesinger also believes that “European companies should make more lobbyes at much earlier stages.”
They each give birth to questions about whether his gambling pays off to investors. At the same time, his early vision of a more autonomous European defense ecosystem is currently adopted by many other investors as geopolitical tensions increased, and Europe thoughts its findings regarding security.
Data published at the starting of this 12 months by NATO Innovation Fund and The Research Group Dealroom showed that European startups working on defense and related technology collected 24% more capital in 2024. $ 5.2 billion – Even AI financing.
When President Donald Trump returned to the office in January and quit doubts about the US involvement in European defense, this number will probably increase even higher.