The European artificial intelligence (AI) defense company Helsing revealed on Thursday, Sept.14, that it has secured $223 million (approximately 209 million euros) in Series B funding, with General Catalyst, a venture capital firm, the leading. Swedish aerospace and automotive manufacturer Saab also joined as a strategic investor.
The company emphasized its commitment to the development of AI technology for the protection of democratic countries. Helsing co-founder Gundbert Scherf said in a statement:
“We founded Helsing because we believe that AI is essential for democracies to continue to protect their values, Our recent traction shows that this belief is shared by governments and industry.”
Founded in 2021, Helsing specializes in the creation of AI-powered military solutions and components, serving projects such as the future upgrade of the NATO Eurofighter aircraft and the Future Combat Air System initiative ( FCAS).
Since the introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence has taken on the parallels of a competitive race. A growing number of companies are looking to offer governments and armed forces more efficient and cost-effective AI-driven military technologies. Among the companies that are venturing into the role of AI in warfare are Kratos Defense and Shield AI, based in San Diego.
Artificial intelligence has been developing at an unprecedented rate in recent years and is being integrated into various industries. With the introduction of generative AI, there has been a significant improvement in the capabilities of natural language processing (NLP) systems. These models generate human-like text, can translate language, answer questions and even write creative content.
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During a press conference on July 13, Hollywood actors confirmed that they will go on strike due to the involvement of AI in representing background performers.
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content—such as text, images, or music—using prompts. Such tools are trained on large amounts of existing data to generate such outputs.
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