Helsing launches European alternative to Palantir’s military AI
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German defense technology company Helsing on Nov. 11 unveiled Clarity, a military AI platform pitched as a sovereign European alternative to U.S. providers such as Palantir, promising military control over their data, AI models and operations.
Ukraine’s vast reserves of battlefield imagery, collected throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion, have become a resource for military AI development, raising questions about which governments and companies can use the data and who owns the resulting technology.
Clarity uses hundreds of specialized AI agents to analyze satellite imagery, drone video, signals and written reports in parallel, Helsing said in a press release. It identifies potential targets and prepares information for weapons systems, with human operators approving every target and handover.
"A capability this critical must be sovereign," Helsing co-founder and co-CEO Gundbert Scherf said in the press release.
Helsing says its software and AI models are developed in Europe and run on customer-owned infrastructure. NATO already uses Palantir’s Maven Smart System. In May, then Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Ukraine used Palantir's technology for intelligence analysis and planning long-range strikes.
Ukraine is also developing its own military AI industry. Its Avengers Labs platform holds more than 5 million annotated battlefield frames, mostly collected through the Ukrainian-developed DELTA combat system, according to the Defense Ministry.
Kyiv has begun opening its reserves of battlefield data to partners under controlled arrangements. An August AI partnership with Britain was followed by a competition offering to foreign companies access to develop AI for drone swarms.
