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Home » News » One Year of Fostering Defense Innovation in Europe: 2024 in Review and What’s Next

One Year of Fostering Defense Innovation in Europe: 2024 in Review and What’s Next

In 2024, more than 1,000 days have passed since Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. A war that has displaced millions, claimed countless lives, and broken with a fundamental paradigm of the global order: that borders can’t be moved by force.

Ukraine’s fight is not just about its sovereignty. It is a stand for liberty, democracy, independence, and peace. And we unwaveringly support Ukraine in its fight for freedom.

Human rights can never be taken for granted. As Europeans, we have a moral imperative to unite and develop the means to defend our values, human rights, and lives if we have to—today and in the future. This is exactly why European countries must accelerate the development of advanced defense technologies and why we started the European Defense Tech Hub in 2024.

The European Defense Tech Hub (EDTH) is a network for proactive defense innovation in Europe. Our mission is to bring more talent into Europe’s defense technology sector, accelerate defense innovation, and foster collaboration between startups, academia, government, and the military. We organize events such as the European Defense Tech Hackathon and connect startups, academia, defense agencies, and industry leaders to advance novel solutions for pressing security challenges. 

It all began with our first hackathon in Munich in June 2024. For one weekend, participants from all across Europe came together to brainstorm and develop prototypes to address real-world problems: high school students, university students, STEM graduates, young professionals, seasoned industry experts, and founders of defense startups. 

After only two months of preparation, we gathered more than 150 participants working on 34 projects. The energy was palpable, and many of the projects pursued truly surprising innovations. Who would have thought, for example, that stealthy nanoparticles could be used for reconnaissance? 

Even days after the hackathon, people contacted us, asking when the next one would be and how they could get involved. That’s when we realized this was more than just a one-off event. The hackathon sparked something much larger: the European Defense Tech Hub. This wasn’t just about solving challenges in a single weekend; it was about creating a movement and fostering an ecosystem to advance Europe’s resilience through innovation.

Since then, we have run two more hackathons in major European cities, Copenhagen and Paris, and supported an additional hackathon in Kyiv. Overall, the engagement last year has been beyond our imagination, with over 420 participants forming more than 80 teams and tackling more than 100 real-world challenges sourced from the frontlines of Ukraine and our partners in the EU and NATO.

Key Themes for Defense Innovation in 2024

As we previously covered the themes and key results of the Munich hackathon in-depth, our focus here is on the bigger picture of how 2024 unfolded and where we stand today. 

Before each hackathon, we work closely with our partners to identify and source urgent challenges Ukrainian soldiers face in the field and broader security issues relevant to NATO and its allies. We stay laser-focused on critical problems and enhancing defense capabilities.

Since 2022, the war in Ukraine has made one thing clear: the nature of warfare is evolving. We’re witnessing attacks by drones that cost a fraction of the assets they destroy (asymmetric warfare), drone swarms that traditional methods struggle to counter, and autonomous systems leveraging machine learning to make decisions—potentially without human intervention.

Accordingly, our hackathons center on these key themes: 

  • AI for Defense: Developing technologies to detect drones, track objects, and convert tactical communications into real-time digital battlefield updates.
  • Drone Detection and Counter-Drone Solutions: Exploring innovative approaches to modern warfare dynamics, particularly in aerial reconnaissance and localization, underwater reconnaissance, counter-unmanned aircraft systems (CUAS) solutions, and interception of threats like Shahed drones and helicopters.
  • Autonomy for Unmanned Systems: Advancing autonomous capabilities for individual drones for last-mile targeting and enabling swarm coordination, particularly in GPS-denied environments.
  • Electronic Warfare: Counter jamming and spoofing of communications systems.
  • Demining: Encouraging scalable solutions for detecting landmines and submerged threats, including tunnels and bunkers.

These challenges evolve from month to month. For example, throughout 2024, electronic warfare has reached new levels of sophistication, particularly in jamming or spoofing drone communications or downing or redirecting them by electronic warfare measures. In response, innovators are exploring alternative methods of communication and navigation for contested environments, such as optical fiber-linked drones or navigation systems powered by computer vision.

Based on these developments, we adjusted our focus for the Copenhagen and Paris hackathons. Together with our partner BRAVE1, we prioritized challenges and encouraged the teams to develop solutions to differentiate between friend and foe on the battlefield, using advanced radar technologies and machine learning to identify and single out enemy drones, as well as developing methods for detecting Shahed drones in low-light conditions. Additional themes centered on underwater navigation, swarming strategies for optical fiber drones, and interceptors designed to counter Shahed drones and helicopters effectively.

From Hackathons to Startups: Real Companies Are Emerging

After every hackathon, we keep close contact with the hackathon teams to monitor their progress and see how we can help. Across our three hackathons in 2024, Munich, Copenhagen, and Paris, we have consistently seen 10-12 defense tech startups being newly founded or propelled forward through the hackathons. 

Here’s an overview of some of the most promising startups that emerged from our hackathons in 2024: 

Munin – After winning second place at our first Munich hackathon, they are validating their counter-drone solution to protect soldiers on the frontline in Ukraine. They’ve since participated in our Copenhagen and Paris hackathons, refining their approach and connecting with key stakeholders. 

SentIRXThe third-place winners from Munich were a group of Bulgarian high school students who worked on demining using thermal cameras and drones. They simulated their solution using synthetic data during the hackathon—then went on to found a company and verify it with real-world data and actual hardware.

Mimotype Technologies – At the Munich hackathon, they explored a novel reconnaissance channel using stealthy nanoparticles—dubbed Project FAR SIGHT (Fluorescence Assisted Reconnaissance). Since then, they’ve teamed up with SPRIND, the German Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation,  and scaled their production of advanced nanoparticle-based materials. They’re now seeking partners with optical sensors to integrate their technology across ground stations, drones, and even space platforms.

PLENO – While they generally work on ​autonomy for robots, at the Munich hackathon, they focused on vision-based navigation for drones in GPS-denied environments. They participated again in the Paris hackathon, which allowed them to iterate quickly on their product and gather feedback from various experts. They also teamed up with several people, and as a result, they hired two strong team members.

Unbound AutonomyThey develop an AI pin for mission-critical operations designed to convert unstructured tactical communications into digital battlefield updates. After the Munich hackathon, they went through the ScaleWolf accelerator program, joined us again for the Paris hackathon, and recently got into the Startup Lithuania Accelerator by Plug and Play Europe. 

NORDA Dynamics – Since the Munich hackathon, they have made progress in autonomous piloting and targeting systems for UAVs. The United Angels Network recognized them as the Best Defense Growth Startup, and they tested their solution in Ukraine and Kursk (watch the demo on YouTube). 

Aquahub – The team won second place at our Copenhagen hackathon and is developing an underwater docking and charging station (Haven) and a navigation module for underwater drones (Tiamat). They had the opportunity to present at the Polish Naval Academy in Gdańsk, where they received valuable feedback from industry experts.

Sapper IntelligenceDeveloped ground-penetrating radar to detect threats beneath soil or vegetation. They tested their radar with dummy landmines at the Copenhagen hackathon, gathered direct feedback, and refined it into a lightweight radar module mountable on drones.

Neurobus – At the Paris hackathon, they integrated their neuromorphic chip with a camera to detect Shahed drones in low-light conditions—and won first place. They’ve since started working with BRAVE1 to test their prototype under real-world conditions.

26marshals – Started building an LLM-powered battlefield management system at the Paris hackathon. Their system helps commanders make better decisions by transforming radio communication data into a clear visual interface. Afterward, they got into the AI Forge Accelerator program in London and are building a proper MVP.

Variene.ai worked at the Paris hackathon on multimodal reconnaissance drone detection, combining visual and RF signals. After the hackathon, they teamed up with Syntheza to expand their AI training dataset, are now negotiating multiple cooperation agreements, and are testing their prototype in Ukraine with early promising results. 

Deutsche Autonome Flugsysteme provides a suite of technologies for autonomous drone applications. At the Paris hackathon, they showcased a vapor drone capable of deploying a vapor barrier to obscure enemy drone cameras. Since the hackathon, they shipped kits to more clients and are now making a full-scale push into the market. Additionally, one of the partner organizations behind the Paris hackathon has become a customer, and they have generated promising leads for potential hires.

Bynesoft joined us for the Paris hackathon to develop the “Hugging Face Hub of defense,” a marketplace for startups to list their machine learning models, datasets, and software for engineers from peer companies and primes. 

Savepoint Inc. made great progress during the Paris hackathon on digital battlefields and demining. Initially focused on demining and land remediation in Ukraine, it is now geared toward scaling proven approaches in land recovery globally.

Sirvan Almasi – After being part of the winning team of our Munich hackathon, he is now working on the digital battlefield of the future with his stealth startup. He has participated again in our Copenhagen hackathon: “The hackathon was a great forum to network and connect with key stakeholders all over Europe. I was able to connect with key industry players and users. I have started a company and am deep into building the first product.”

Antoine Besset and Adhémar de Senneville – Built a drone to intercept enemy helicopters at the Paris hackathon—and won third place. The hackathon helped them connect with people working in Ukraine, who clarified the key use cases and specifications needed for deploying their drone. They continue working on the project as a stealth startup while refining the technical specs for deployment.

What’s Next for the European Defense Tech Hub in 2025? 

In 2024, EDTH has shown that Europe is a breeding ground for top-tier innovation. 

We continue building the community and are on track to organize more than ten European Defense Tech Hackathons in 2025 – six hackathons are already confirmed

This summer, we’ll also host the “EDTH Hack Week,” during which top teams from our past hackathons will tackle current challenges and prepare for fundraising. 

Please contact us if you’d like to support us or bring a European Defense Tech Hackathon to your region! Sign up for our newsletter and check out our event calendar: https://lu.ma/eurodefensetech