Helsing’s Keybotic Acquisition Reveals Europe’s Real Defense Vulnerability: It’s Not in the Sky

When Germany’s hottest defense startup quietly acquires a Spanish robot dog company, the headlines should make you pause. Helsing, the €12 billion AI defense giant that has dominated European drone coverage for the past year, just added Barcelona-based Keybotic to its portfolio. The deal flew under the radar, according to Novobrief’s Hannah Bestow, but it tells us something important about where Europe’s defense planners see the next generation of threats emerging.

This is not another combat drone story. Keybotic builds four-legged autonomous robots designed to inspect industrial facilities, detect gas leaks, and monitor critical infrastructure in real time. Think Boston Dynamics‘ Spot, but purpose-built for oil refineries, power plants, and transport networks. The fact that Helsing wants this capability should concern anyone paying attention to Europe’s security posture.

From DARPA Challenge Winner to European Defense Asset

Keybotic’s origin story matters here. Co-founders Irene Gómez and Hilario Tomé built their credibility the hard way, winning the prestigious DARPA Robotics Challenge with their autonomous inspection robot concept. That is not a competition you stumble into. DARPA challenges attract the world’s best robotics teams and test solutions against real-world problems that the U.S. military actually needs solved.

The prize money funded development of Keyper, an autonomous robot capable of accessing all areas of an industrial plant and reporting issues in real time. By 2023, Keybotic had raised €3 million and started delivering robots to customers in energy, oil and gas, and mining sectors. The technology works.

For Helsing, this acquisition fits a clear pattern. The company has been systematically building what CEO Daniel Ek calls an “all-domain, AI software and hardware company.” First came the HX-2 AI-powered attack drone, now deployed in Ukraine with thousands more on order. Then the Blue Ocean acquisition brought autonomous underwater vehicles and the SG-1 Fathom glider for subsea surveillance. Now Keybotic adds ground-based autonomous inspection to the portfolio.

Air. Sea. Ground. Helsing is not building a drone company. It is building Europe’s autonomous defense infrastructure.

The Baltic Sea Problem Nobody Wants to Discuss

Here is the context that makes this acquisition urgent rather than interesting. In 2025 alone, there were at least six documented incidents of damage and disruption to undersea cables off the Baltic coast. Power cables, telecommunications links, and data infrastructure connecting European nations have been targeted in what security analysts increasingly characterize as coordinated attacks.

Helsing’s co-founder Dr. Gundbert Scherf has been explicit about this vulnerability. The unique structure of the European Union, where each country prioritizes its own defense systems rather than centralizing resources, makes member states vulnerable to precisely this kind of asymmetric threat. You cannot shoot down a cable-cutting operation with a fighter jet. You need persistent surveillance, autonomous inspection capabilities, and rapid response systems that work across borders.

Keybotic’s Keyper robots can detect anomalies, monitor equipment status, and send real-time alerts without requiring human operators to physically inspect facilities. In a world where Europe’s energy infrastructure, pipelines, and transport networks face constant probing, that capability becomes strategic rather than operational.

The “Buy European” Strategy Takes Shape

Germany announced plans in September 2025 to spend up to €83 billion on European-made weapons amid growing doubts about Washington’s reliability. From 2020 to 2024, U.S. arms exports to Europe more than tripled. That dependency has become politically untenable as President Trump threatens to withdraw support for Ukraine and openly discusses options to acquire Greenland.

The European Parliament approved the European Defence Industry Programme in November 2025, allocating €1.5 billion through 2027 to support joint defense procurement. The explicit goal is building what officials call “defense sovereignty” through homegrown technology rather than American imports.

We have been covering this shift extensively at DroneXL. Germany has awarded €900 million in drone contracts to Helsing, Stark, and Rheinmetall. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius committed €10 billion to unmanned aerial vehicles as part of a massive €377 billion defense spending plan through 2035. The EU’s “drone wall” initiative along the eastern border has accelerated from concept to procurement.

But as we have noted repeatedly, Europe is years behind on counter-drone technology. The same is true for critical infrastructure protection. Keybotic represents the kind of dual-use technology that bridges the gap between civilian industrial applications and defense requirements.

What Industry Observers Are Saying

Philip Hicks, Principal Consultant and Founder at Pravo Consulting, captured the significance of this deal in a LinkedIn post that caught our attention.

Hicks argues that “the deal reflects a wider continental push towards defence autonomy as governments and industry work to reduce strategic dependence on external suppliers and strengthen protection of critical infrastructure.”

Hicks points to Keybotic’s DARPA origins as validation of Spain’s robotics ecosystem strength. While Germany and France lead in robotics hardware, Spain has built a strong software capability with Barcelona serving as a hub for engineering universities, research institutes, and deep-tech startups.

The consultant’s assessment cuts to the strategic core: “Partnerships like this point to a future where European innovation plays a central role in safeguarding the continent’s most vital assets.”

The Inspection Robot Reality Check

For drone professionals, the Keybotic acquisition highlights a broader convergence happening across the autonomous systems industry. We covered this trend back in 2022 when we reported on the SPRINT Robotics Fitness Challenge in Rotterdam, where robot dogs from Boston Dynamics and ANYbotics competed alongside drones from Percepto and Voliro Airborne Robotics to perform industrial inspections.

The conclusion from that event holds true today: neither drones nor ground robots alone solve the inspection problem completely. Industrial facilities span multiple levels, include confined spaces, and present obstacles that favor different platform types. The companies winning this market combine aerial and ground capabilities into integrated systems.

Helsing’s portfolio now includes exactly that combination. The CA-1 Europa autonomous combat drone handles air domain. The SG-1 Fathom and Lura platform cover underwater surveillance. Keybotic fills the ground-based gap. All three share AI-driven autonomous operation as their core capability.

DroneXL’s Take

This acquisition tells us more about European defense priorities than any policy document or parliamentary debate. When a €12 billion defense company quietly acquires an industrial robot dog maker, the message is clear: the next security threats will not all come from the sky.

Critical infrastructure protection has become the unglamorous but essential frontier of defense technology. Pipelines, power plants, data centers, and transport networks face persistent threats that traditional military assets cannot address. You need autonomous systems capable of constant surveillance, rapid inspection, and immediate alerting without human operators on site.

Helsing understood this before most observers did. Their systematic acquisition strategy building air, sea, and ground autonomous capabilities positions them as the default European provider for integrated infrastructure protection. That is a market position worth far more than any single combat drone contract.

My prediction: we will see similar acquisitions accelerate across European defense tech over the next 12 months. Companies building autonomous inspection, monitoring, and surveillance capabilities for industrial applications will find themselves courted by defense contractors recognizing that the distinction between civilian and military infrastructure protection has collapsed.

The real question for drone professionals is whether this convergence creates opportunity or competition. Autonomous inspection is a growing market, but as defense requirements shape product development, the technology may evolve in directions that prioritize military specifications over commercial flexibility.

What do you think? Is the convergence of industrial robotics and defense technology good for the broader autonomous systems industry? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Editorial Note: This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI to ensure technical accuracy and archive retrieval. All insights, industry analysis, and perspectives were provided exclusively by Haye Kesteloo and our other DroneXL authors, editors, and Youtube partners to ensure the “Human-First” perspective our readers expect.