Ingvar Helgason has formally launched Stratis Intelligence, a new European big data startup backed by the Estonian defence-tech fund Darkstar among others, at the Resilience Conference on Tuesday.
“We have built an intelligence platform for spatial, temporal datasets … allowing our partners to query across petabyte-scale datasets in milliseconds,” Helgason – who previously founded biotech company VitroLabs – told the audience.
The system is still under wraps, but according to Helgason’s description, it will be able to stitch together dense sensor data, economic signals and supply chain intelligence to surface “weak signals” in an era when “hot wars, cold wars and trade wars [are] all happening in Europe at the same time.”
The Stratis engine was built by co-founder and technologist Smári McCarthy, who has had an interesting career up to now that’s included being part of the Pirate Party, consulting as an information security specialist, being the CTO of the investigative journalism organisation Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, overseeing the Aleph platform that powered the Panama Papers investigation, and working as a member of parliament in Iceland. It was during his time as a politician that he saw first-hand the shortcomings in the public sector when it came to leveraging data better.
“They were making decisions on economy and trade and climate, and the datasets exist – but there’s no way to query them,” Helgason said. “So Smári left parliament to build this engine… It’s been built in the last three and a half years, and it’s extremely powerful.”
Helgason emphasised that, unlike other companies building big data platforms, Stratis does not collect customer data.
“Your data is your data. We never see your data … our engine can sit on your servers, air-gapped networks, high-side networks, and it can even run on a five-year-old laptop,” he said.
Stratis’s launch today came alongside another milestone: a confirmation of Darkstar’s investment in the startup.
Ragnar Sass, who leads the fund, called it their “biggest cheque so far” but declined to disclose how much it had invested; Helgason declined to disclose the size of the round itself nor how much it has raised to date.
“We spent time with [Stratis] in Ukraine this summer, and we have not met such a capable team that is so mission-driven to help where it is most needed,” he said, adding that Darkstar’s model is to put startups through frontline bootcamps before committing capital. “This is not about hype – the KPI is saving lives or killing the enemy,” Sass said.
Helgason said the funding will support hiring across the Nordics and Baltics, as well as the delivery of first products, including a mission-planning tool now being trialled in Ukraine. He also confirmed talks with Nordic services interested in open source analytics. A second, unnamed co-investor is also backing the round.
Asked whether Stratis should be thought of as “the Palantir of Europe,” Helgason was cautious: “It’s not a term that we use, but we have been called that. Europe needs its own sovereign software platforms.”
For now, the company’s focus is squarely on Europe, though Helgason acknowledged “grey zones” in its export policy. “Europe needs to stand on its own two feet … we need our own data stores, our own software, our own manufacturing.”
