How the new primes actually won — and what it means for everyone else
How Helsing and Anduril entered the UK market
The conventional wisdom for entering a new defence market is to partner with an established prime. Become a trusted supplier, build relationships inside the MOD, deliver on smaller contracts, and gradually position for larger ones. The prime opens the door. You earn the right to lead later.
Anduril and Helsing deliberately chose a different one. Both companies entered the UK market directly, targeting urgent operational gaps that the legacy system was too slow to fill and without a prime as an intermediary.
Anduril’s first UK contract was a £4M deal with UK Strategic Command’s jHub to trial its Lattice operating system at the airbase RAF Akrotiri - small in value, but an efficient way to start owning the relationship with the MOD directly. Helsing incorporated as a UK entity from day one, with a single proposition of building autonomous military systems.
Both approaches were a deliberate inversion of the traditional model:
From pilots to kill chains
The move from small innovation contracts to strategic relevance happened through Project ASGARD - the British Army’s effort to build a digital targeting web, connecting sensors to shooters in near-real time via AI.
Anduril provided the Lattice command-and-control backbone and the Ghost drone. Helsing provided AI-enabled targeting and the HX-2 strike drone. Contracts were awarded in January 2025, with first deployments a few months later in May 2025 - a tempo that traditional primes rarely match.
On Project NYX, the British Army’s collaborative combat drone programme, Anduril is both the prime and lead systems integrator, with GKN Aerospace building the airframes to its specifications. Helsing is following the same logic with its Plymouth factory, manufacturing the underwater drone itself.
Why foreign entities hit a ceiling
To lead programmes like UK’s ASGARD, you need List X status: the ability to hold and process UK Secret information on your own infrastructure. List X is only granted to companies incorporated in the UK with at least one physical UK site. Bid as a French or German entity, and the classified integration work must flow to a UK partner - which immediately downgrades you from prime to subcontractor, regardless of your technology.
The second constraint is softer but real. The UK MOD’s Defence and Security Industrial Strategy weights social value and UK industrial benefit at 10-20% of bid scores. A foreign entity with no UK jobs, no UK tax contribution, and no local manufacturing starts every bid behind. To win in the UK, you need to be perceived as a local player.
Sovereignty doesn’t require scale
Helsing didn’t solve this by building a large UK operation. It built a lean, strategically structured one - and today the UK MOD perceives Helsing as a British company. That perception came from people, not headcount: their first UK CEO was Nick Elliott, a former Director General of the UK Vaccine Taskforce. Sir Chris Deverell, a four-star general, came on as an advisor.
Anduril took the visibility even further and launched an aggressive marketing campaign that dominated the London Tube for weeks.
In parallel, operating an extensive lobbying effort is also necessary: Anduril ran 19 meetings with government officials since 2023, former MOD staff hired into the team, industry groups joined, events sponsored. Winning contracts in a new market is about being structurally local — but heavy lobbying definitely helps.
Incorporate early, hire for credibility, start with quick wins that build MOD trust, and scale from there toward programmes of record. Anduril started with a £3.8M jHub contract. It now sits at the centre of the UK’s defence plans.
Fundraisings
Shield AI, which develops AI pilot technology for military aircraft, raised a $2B Series G at a $12.7B valuation led by Advent.
Saronic, an autonomous maritime systems company, raised a $1.75B Series D at a $9.25B valuation, led by Kleiner Perkins.
Hermeus, a hypersonic aircraft company, raised a $350M Series C at a $1B valuation, led by Khosla Ventures.
Zipline, which operates autonomous drone delivery systems for medical supplies, food, and retail, raised a $200M Series H at a $7.6B valuation, led by Fidelity.
PAVE Space, which develops orbital transfer vehicles to move satellites between orbits, raised a $40M seed round co-led by Visionaries Club and Creandum.
Egide, a French startup developing interceptor drones to destroy hostile UAVs, raised a $9.3M seed round co-led by Expeditions.
Airbase, which automates spectrum allocation, raised a $5M round led by A16Z.
Eclipse, a hard tech VC firm focused on manufacturing and defence, raised a $1.3B fund.
Very timely analysis! Funnily enough I was thinking about this topic especially with the announcement of Anduril x Kraken. This is another point to add that such non-native neo-primes have also actively sought collaboration with UK-based startups to further accelerate contract acquisition.