
Founded in 1983 by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz, Accel is a global venture capital firm investing from seed through growth stage across the US, Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. The firm has backed over 1,170 companies producing 103 unicorns, 47 IPOs, and 381 acquisitions. Its 2005 investment of $12.7m for 10% of Facebook became one of the most lucrative VC bets in history, worth $6.6B at IPO. Other notable investments include Spotify, Slack, CrowdStrike, Atlassian, UiPath, Flipkart, and Freshworks. In 2024/25 Accel raised $650m for its sixth European fund (AI and cybersecurity focus) and $650m for India/Southeast Asia.
2 companies in our directory
Helsing is a defence technology company focused on building AI-powered software and autonomous systems for military applications across air, land, sea, space, and cyber domains. Founded in Munich in 2021 by Gundbert Scherf, Niklas Kohler, and Torsten Reil, the company has rapidly scaled to become one of Europe's most valuable defence tech startups, valued at €12B following a €600M Series D led by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek's Prima Materia. Helsing has delivered thousands of strike drones to Ukraine, acquired aircraft manufacturer Grob Aircraft, and unveiled the CA-1 Europa autonomous combat aerial vehicle. The UK is a core operating market: Helsing incorporated its UK subsidiary simultaneously with German operations in 2021, has committed £350M of investment under the UK-Germany Trinity House Agreement, opened an 18,000 sq ft Resilience Factory in Plymouth to produce the SG-1 Fathom autonomous submarine-hunting glider, and holds multiple MoD contracts including the ASGARD programme for AI-enabled battlefield targeting. The company maintains a London HQ at Mortimer Street and actively hires across UK engineering and AI research roles.
CHAOS Industries is a Los Angeles-based defence technology company that develops advanced radar, sensor, communication, and detection systems for national security applications. The company's flagship platform, Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN), delivers high-performance sensing and electronic effects across land, sea, and air domains. Its commercial radar product, Vanquish, provides early warning and tracking against drones, missiles, and aircraft. Founded by former executives of defence tech firm Epirus, CHAOS has grown rapidly in the counter-drone and critical infrastructure space. The company was valued at $4.5 billion following its latest funding round in late 2025, positioning it as one of the fastest-growing defence technology startups in the US.