Stark — the Berlin-based producer of strike drones and related software that quietly raised $62 million earlier this year without a CEO on board — has finally announced an official head. Uwe Horstmann, the founder of defence VC Project A (one of the earliest investors in Stark), is now its CEO.
Rumors of Horstmann taking the helm have been swirling since earlier this year; Stark declined to confirm or deny them to Resilience Media at the time.
Stark was founded by Florian Seibel, who is the CEO of another defence tech company, Quantum Systems. Seibel once said he founded Stark after the German government requested Quantum Systems to develop weaponised versions of its surveillance aircraft (outside the scope of Quantum Systems). Seibel was something of a de facto spokesperson for Stark prior to the $62 million fundraise. Notably, he is not mentioned at all in the announcement of Horstmann’s appointment.
Stark is using the news of Horstmann’s ascendancy to confirm some of its investors publicly for the first time: Sequoia, the NATO Innovation Fund, In-Q-Tel (the investment arm of the CIA) and Project A are all named as backers.
Investors not mentioned but previously confirmed to us by a source at the company include Thiel Capital, Döpfner Capital, and Joe Lonsdale’s firm 8VC. We’ve asked the company about this and will update as we learn more.
Stark’s rise is coming within a larger sea change in Europe. We are seeing a massive wave of defence and resilience-tech startups emerging in the region propelled by geopolitical forces and a rise of technological advancements in areas like artificial intelligence.
War in Europe; a change in how superpowers like the US want to engage in the region when it comes to defence and economic relationships; and the spectre of other superpowers like China are all forcing ministries of defence to rethink and expand their military capabilities. The imperative is to do so with new generations of more advanced weapons and systems to match (and exceed) the capabilities of adversaries.
“Advances in AI, decades of underinvestment, and a changing geopolitical landscape mean there is a clear, urgent ‘why now’ for a modern defence company in Europe,” Luciana Lixandru, a partner at Sequoia Capital, said in a statement.
In Europe in particular, the war in Ukraine has focused a lot of minds on how ready the region is to face a wider conflict. That is driving a lot of R&D, procurement and overall strategy.
Stark is very much a product of that. It has been around for less than two years, but in that time it’s picked up significant traction by positioning itself and its products in the eye of the storm.
That has included deploying Virtus, which it calls its flagship loitering munition, into Ukraine, where it’s been used in reconnaissance and strike missions. It’s also built Vanta, an unmanned surface vessel, that has yet to be deployed but has been publicly demonstrated, which is one step in that direction. Minerva, its command and control software, works across air, sea, and land, and it powers both Virtus and Vanta.
It’s also pitching itself as an acquirer and a company that is willing to bet capital on its focus: that has included investing in “thousands of warheads to ensure delivery of a fully certified
European loitering munition before 2027.” It’s also establishing a production facility in the UK.
“What STARK has achieved in just 18 months is only the beginning,” said Horstmann in a statement. “Europe’s security depends on those who can deliver and that’s exactly what STARK will continue to do.”
Horstmann has been a longtime figure in tech in Germany, but not in defence tech per se. He started his career in 2007 at Rocket Internet, the e-commerce startup incubator that initially gained a reputation as a “clone factory” for building dozens of companies on models forged first in the US (some of those were eventually acquired by their US counterparts; some became large companies in their own right).
He shifted to enterprise-related startups when he co-founded the seed investor Project A in 2012, investing in dozens of companies across categories like fintech, supply chain tech, and autonomous tech before taking a more focused turn to resilience and defence tech. Project A was one of the earliest investors in Stark.
Stark said that Horstmann, who is currently a partner at Project A, will continue to “remain active” in Project A’s investment activities, “ensuring STARK’s strong ties to Europe’s venture ecosystem.” We have also asked Stark and Horstmann what that means. At its most optimistic, there is potential for smaller companies to work within Stark’s ecosystem to get to market faster. However, it’s unclear how he and the companies will handle any potential conflicts of interest between those portfolio companies and Stark. We have asked the question and will update with any response we receive.
