This founder left Silicon Valley to challenge the American defense supremacy of Athens, and investors are paying attention

In the summer of 2021, Dimitross Kottas made a movement that would be unfathomable for most Silicon Valley engineers: after leaving their coveted position in Apple’s special group of special projects, he packed his life in California and returned to Athens to start a defense company.

Three and a half years later, its beginning, Delian Alliance industriesHe has established solar energy surveillance towers that monitor some of Greece’s borders throughout the day and detect forest fires in remote islands, along with a pipe of other products, including hidden marine drones designed to keep enemies at bay.

But the most ambitious bet of Kottas is not in any particular technology: it is really that a small Greek startup can break the notoriously chilled defense market in Europe.

This may seem less a bet today, especially because defense technology has never been hotter, but Kottas’s path to Deian has been a long work in progress, as he told this editor about a recent zoom call.

After obtaining recognition for his academic work at the University of Minnesota in Navigation with GPS – The research that says has been cited more than 1,400 times: it joined Apple in 2016, where spent six years working in autonomous systems with cameras, lidares and radars. While he said he cannot discuss the details due to the confidentiality agreements, the technologies that developed jointly in Apple’s secret division clearly helped inform what Deian is building.

“In the heart of autonomy is perception,” Kottas explained, describing how machines must understand not only where the objects are but what they are doing and what they intend to do. “This is in the heart of autonomy, and given autonomy will be in the hearts of all future weapons systems, that is the central technology that will boost the change in the defense industry during the next decade.”

However, it was not only a technological vision that promoted his career change. A series of geopolitical events: see the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict; Seeing countries seek to review their surrounding borders; And recognizing how far the European military had fallen, had begun to gnaw him. “I literally lost sleep,” he said.

Instead of trying to build the next -generation combat plane, Kottas began with something pragmatic that could sell more immediately: surveillance towers. The movement was apparently torn from the play book of the eight -year -old weapons manufacturer, Anduril, who began with aquatic software surveillance towers that sold customs and border protection of the United States.

But Deian’s newest products reveal larger ambitions. The “Interceptigon” series presents drones and hidden autonomous air vessels and containers designed to lie latent until threats appear.

The most striking example is a two -meter suicidal container that is packed in a cylinder and is displayable months in advance at the bottom of the sea at depths where satellites and drones cannot detect it. When activated remotely, it seems “out of nowhere for the enemy,” Kottas told TechCrunch, adding that Delian has patented this approach, which uses commercial materials to make weapons to “large -scale and really at an extremely low cost.”

It is a model that Kottas says that it does not exist in another part of the western defense industry. It has also attracted investors who have just provided Delian $ 14 million in funds. In fact, the startup announced on Tuesday that its previous sponsors, Air Street Capital and Marathon Venture Capital, have led their new capital infusion, which carries the total financing of Delian to date to $ 22 million.

This is where Kottas’s story becomes more complicated. Despite the technological achievements and Operating Success of Delian in Greece, the European market in general remains a formidable challenge. According to reports, US officials have been Pressure European countries will continue to buy weapons from US attire. In addition, European countries have long favored their own harvesting defense companies, a trend that some investors believe that new companies such as Delian will climb through borders.

“That concern is stronger at this time in France,” Kottas acknowledged, although he argued that the landscape is changing. And as evidence that fragmentation is being overcome, said European Union initiatives as Sure and Rearm EuropeDesigned to promote cross -border defense cooperation.

The test, he insisted, is already emerging, with companies like the Tekever in Portugal. Unicorn stateand Germany quantum systems compete worldwide. “There are companies that raised (…) a tenth of what their American competitors raised, and competed in the same market exactly, and the European counterpart won.”

Naturally, the question is what Kottas thinks of Anduril, and the founder is respectful, although not intimidated. “It is definitely a generational company that will inspire many military founders and officers throughout the planet,” he said.

But he warned against assuming the first winners. “Where we are standing now, it’s like 2015 for self -employed cars (…) Imagine trying to predict the winner at that time.”

Even so, the question remains whether a Greek startup, regardless of how innovative, can convince French, German or British defense establishments to bet their national security in foreign technology. Kottas recently presented an offer for a German tender, a trial case for his thesis that a decentralized Europe can be overcome through higher technology and competitive prices.

Meanwhile, what can differentiate Kottas from many defense technology entrepreneurs is the personal mission. Referring to aerospace and the United States defense giant, Lockheed Martin, Kottas reflected that it is “different from building weapons in New Mexico that will be used on the other side of the planet,” he reflects. “That is a mentality, (but) it is different to build something that you know can be used to save your brother, your sister or your neighbor.”

This feeling can demonstrate Delian’s greatest asset, as shared by businessmen throughout Europe who see the conflict not as an abstract possibility but as a lived reality. It promotes the company’s approach to low -cost and rapidly drop -down systems that can be produced at a scale, and explains its emphasis on technology that can be positioned and activated when necessary. It could also convince other European nations that Geography matters more than nationality when it comes to defense.

In any case, the unconventional trip of Kottas from Athens to Minneapolis to Apple and back to Athens suggests that he feels comfortable with much more likely.

There is a “benefit of building a company” in a smaller market in a continent known for its balcanization. “It forces you to be more resistant, more efficient and to concentrate without mercy on the construction of a great technology at a really low price, which matters in this business.”

“I think the fragmentation will be overcome in the coming years, and you can give it the advantage if you play it well.”