Weekend Read: Inside Bessemer Venture Partners Investing Thesis with Alex Ferrara
As defence tech investment hits record highs across Europe, Bessemer doubles down on the sector — from drones and aerial defence to advanced manufacturing and sovereign hardware
Resilience Media welcomed Alex Ferrara, Managing Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners to the Resilience Conference 2025 stage, alongside Auterion CEO Lorenz Meier. Bessemer had just made news by leading Auterion’s $100M Series B round. Following that, Bessemer released its European Resilience Roadmap and Alex sat down with Resilience Media Managing Editor Ingrid Lunden to talk about it.
An excerpt is below, which you can continue reading by following the link to the full piece. Have a good weekend and we’ll see you again next week.
We’re at a high watermark for defence tech investing across Europe, with startups in the region expected to raise more than $1.5 billion this year per our recent report.
Having backed a number of defence tech companies primarily in the US, mega VC Bessemer Venture Partners wants to make more inroads into the sector in Europe — an approach it has outlined in a recent report.
Some observers believe we’re already in a bubble when it comes to drones. Yes, there is a strong need for these unmanned aerial vehicles — Ukraine itself aims to produce 4.5 million this year — but is that demand being met or even outpaced by the number of drone startups that have set up shop?
But while that’s an issue that’s sure to see more debate over the coming years, one key takeaway from Bessemer’s report is that the funnel of technologies and startups that are being assessed is actually much larger than just this. According to the list of technologies and businesses that Bessemer aims to target, the category extends to space tech, industrial manufacturing, aerial defence, and software and hardware used to build command and control systems to run bigger campaigns and strategic work on the front lines, and beyond.
That spells a much bigger opportunity for a wider range of founders and startups out there.
Alex Ferrara, the Bessemer partner who leads its European business out of London, told Resilience Media in an interview that his firm is actively looking to invest in startups that help speak to the wider need for sovereignty and resilience. (Ferrara also explicitly said in the interview that you should reach out to him if one of these categories applies to you.)
Attracted to magnets
Industrial is a potentially massive part of the thesis, covering everything from manufacturing parts through to the materials used to build hardware and weapons.
“We’re looking at some companies in the area of advanced industrial manufacturing, and we hope we can make some investments there,” Ferrara said, noting advances in 3D printing and high-precision manufacturing as essential in their own rights, and also for helping to fill out large order contracts for the products like drones where those components will be used.
He added that his firm is also “starting spend some time” exploring early-stage startups that are looking to make a contribution in the area of materials, specifically rare earth metals and magnets.
Rare earth metals is a great example of how important deep tech is to the concept of resilience overall. They are an essential component of how chips and hardware are made, and a focus on it right now is especially timely: at present, supply is almost completely controlled by China, and we’re seeing the fallout of that, both in Europe and the US.
But any work on this space, at the moment, is still very early and not yet proven out, or the companies themselves are not exactly set up like startups, which will make fitting them into an investment thesis challenging in a different way.
“Some of them are really more like just industrial manufacturing businesses,” Ferrara said. “We’re trying to figure out if there are any ‘venture-backable’ companies using innovative technologies to solve this rare earth problem.”