Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Tuesday, December 10th.

Today on Forbes, European AI Unicorn pivots to launch fleet of killer drones.

When Helsing's CEO and co-founder, Torsten Ryle, took the stage of a tech conference in a London church-turned event space last September.

His vision for the $4.5 billion defense startup was clear.

He said, quote,

we are not a hardware company.

We're a software company.

That's all we do.

The pitch was radically different from other defense startup entrepreneurs

like Anderilil billionaire Palmer Lucky or Shield AI's Ryan Seng, who want to build their own missiles and drones, eventually challenging defense giants like Raytheon or Lockheed Martin.

Instead, Ryle said Helsing would focus on software alone, using AI to supercharge Europe's militaries and

arms makers. At another event in 2022, Ryle, a former video games developer, explained,

quote, it's specifically about adding capabilities to existing assets. But now, he's made a 180-degree shift.

Helsing last week unveiled the HX-2, a drone with a 50-mile range, capable of hunting

in swarms and destroying armored vehicles.

In a statement, Nicholas Kohler, co-founder of Helsing, said, quote,

When deployed along borders at scale,

HX2 can serve as a powerful counter-invasion shield

against enemy land forces.

Peter Quentin, a Helsing spokesperson,

said the company had recently started manufacturing

the HX2 drones in Germany,

...