Munich spatial-AI startup SE3 Labs emerged from stealth on 26 June 2026 with a software stack that lets a single operator command swarms of drones and ground robots in GPS-denied, electronic-warfare contested environments, and with active contracts already in place with the German Bundeswehr.
A spatial intelligence layer for autonomous systems
SE3 positions itself as the layer that sits between raw sensor data and meaningful action. Today's drones can fly a pre-programmed route or follow a beacon, but they cannot reason about the world around them. SE3's stack delivers continuous autonomous navigation using onboard visual-inertial odometry and real-time map matching, replacing the satellite link so each platform builds and updates its own 3D picture as it moves.
On top of that navigation foundation, the perception layer turns visual data into a continuously evolving 3D model of the environment, localizing objects to sub-metre accuracy and sharing that picture across the swarm. For the operator it becomes a live common operating picture controlled in natural language: spoken intent reaches into the 3D space and is distributed as coordinated behavior across many machines at once.
Already operational with the Bundeswehr
SE3's stack is hardware-agnostic, modular, and runs on-edge, and the company says it is already under contract with the German Bundeswehr and operational in military exercises across Europe. In recent exercises, SE3 says it has cut the sensor-to-shooter timeline by an order of magnitude. Last week German Chancellor Friedrich Merz viewed a live army exercise in Munster where SE3 demonstrated how a shared 3D situational picture syncs battlefield systems for coordinated, multi-platform action.
A research-heavy founding team
SE3 was founded by CEO Lukas Koestler, CTO Simon Klenk, and CSO Prof. Daniel Cremers, who holds the Chair for Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich and is a recipient of Germany's Leibniz Prize. The founding team has produced more than 400 publications with over 87,000 citations, combining frontier research with experience from Nvidia, Tesla Autopilot, and Skydio. Investors include Lakestar, Seedcamp, EWOR, the Sequoia Scout Fund, and the founders of Flixbus and Ascending Technologies.
The launch underscores how fast European defense-tech autonomy is maturing. For related coverage see our reports on the counter-drone marketplace at Eurosatory 2026, European AI command-and-control hubs, and KNDS, Helsing and Tytan's containerized drone launcher.
Reporting based on coverage from Tech.eu, The Defence Blog, and SE3 Labs.