Norwegian defence software company Six Robotics has raised €12 million (about $14 million) in its first institutional funding round, led by DTCP through its dedicated DTCP Defence fund, with participation from EIFO, the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark, Copenhagen's Scale Capital and private investors. Unusually for a defence startup, the Oslo-based company took institutional money only after its product was already in the hands of a national army.
Swarm autonomy proven in the field first
Six Robotics develops Valkyrie, a hardware-agnostic software platform that lets a single operator command a coordinated swarm of drones. The system handles autonomous mission planning, real-time task distribution and onboard decision-making, and is designed to keep working where jamming and disrupted communications defeat single-drone systems. The Norwegian Army has already received and tested Valkyrie swarms, developed in close collaboration with the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), and has run joint exercises with Sweden and Finland.
Founder and CEO Christian Fredrik Eggesbø, a former Norwegian Special Forces operator, grew the company from five people to roughly 90 employees on friends-and-family funding since 2023. "Collaborative autonomy will define the next decade of defence. Europe cannot afford to depend on others for the software that defines what its forces can do," he said.
A software-first bet in a hardware-heavy market
The round lands in a European defence-tech market dominated by far larger players. Munich's Helsing was closing in on $1.2 billion at an $18 billion valuation as this deal was announced, while Germany's Quantum Systems and Portugal's Tekever have both passed unicorn status. Six Robotics is deliberately different: it builds no airframes, positioning Valkyrie as the control layer for whatever drones a customer already owns — a strategy that echoes the spatial-AI approach of Germany's SE3 Labs.
Ole Aguirre, partner at DTCP Defence — a €500 million fund launched for defence, security and resilience technology — called swarming at scale "among the most technically challenging areas in modern defence," praising the team's hardware-agnostic, software-first approach. EIFO said it wants Six Robotics to establish Danish operations later in 2026.
What comes next
The funding will accelerate product development, expand deployments across Europe and allied defence markets, and grow the Oslo team. The drone swarm systems market, worth around $3.2 billion in 2026, is projected to reach $8.3 billion by 2030 as militaries shift from single-pilot drones to software-managed fleets — the same trend driving counter-drone plays like Innoviz and Regulus's counter-UAS push.
Reporting based on coverage from Tech Funding News and Six Robotics.