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We have invested in Six Robotics, a Norwegian defence technology company building software that enables unmanned systems to work together in the field. The investment is part of a EUR 12M seed round led by DTCP, with EIFO also participating.
As armed forces deploy increasing numbers of drones and autonomous systems, a new challenge is emerging. Most of these systems come from different manufacturers and were never designed to work together.
Deploying a drone is one thing. Coordinating hundreds of autonomous systems from different manufacturers, operating across different missions and environments, is something entirely different. At a certain scale, this stops being a hardware problem and becomes a software problem.
This is the problem Six Robotics is solving.
The company develops software that acts as a coordination and command layer between autonomous systems and human operators, enabling multiple platforms to operate together rather than as isolated systems. Rather than building hardware, Six Robotics focuses on the software infrastructure that allows autonomous systems to communicate and coordinate more effectively.
Six Robotics was spun out of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in 2023 following more than a decade of research and development within Norway's defence ecosystem. The company was founded by Christian Fredrik Eggesbø, a former Special Forces operator who later worked with collaborative autonomy at FFI before commercialising the technology.
We visited the team in Oslo earlier this year, and what stood out was the technology and the team's deep understanding of the operational challenges faced by end users. That combination of technical depth and real-world experience is rare.
The early traction backs it up. Six Robotics is already deployed with defence customers and strategic partners across Europe and the US. Prior to this financing, the company had raised only EUR 1M in external equity while scaling to nearly 80 people, a level of capital efficiency that is unusual in both defence and software.
For decades, defence procurement was built around large, integrated platforms that were procured in limited numbers and operated for decades. Today, military organisations are adopting autonomous systems that evolve rapidly and come from different suppliers. Interoperability and coordination are becoming strategic capabilities in their own right.
In many ways, the challenge resembles what happened in enterprise software over the last two decades. Value shifted from individual applications to the platforms that connected them. We believe a similar shift is beginning in defence.
The timing is also notable.
Europe is entering a period of major defence investment. Governments across NATO are increasing spending and procurement priorities are shifting. Defence organisations are looking for technologies that can be deployed faster and adapted more quickly than traditional programmes allow.
The market is still early. There is no dominant architecture for how autonomous systems should be coordinated at scale. Many of the companies that may define the next generation of defence infrastructure have not yet been built.
If Europe is serious about strengthening its defence capabilities and technological sovereignty, it will need companies building the software infrastructure that connects and coordinates the next generation of autonomous systems.
That is why we are excited to partner with Six Robotics.
