ctg. morning brief, 10 Oct 2026
On 10 Oct 2026, Finnish counter-drone maker Sensofusion started trading on the Helsinki pre-list on Fri 9 Oct and rose in its debut (Nordic Defence Watch). The heavily oversubscribed offering raised €300m before costs, assuming the overallotment is exercised in full, and Finnish pension funds took €170m of it, per the prospectus. Its systems detect drones and take them down by jamming their radio links, and are used in Ukraine and Israel. Regular trading starts 13 Oct. It is set to be Finland's second-largest listing ever.
Why it matters: Everyone says European defence tech can't exit at home. Here is a counter-drone company going public in Helsinki, with domestic pension money writing more than half the cheque. That is the missing piece: patient local capital that owns the upside instead of selling it to a US fund. Watch the first week of trading and whether Stockholm and Frankfurt get the next one.
Source: https://nordicdefencewatch.com/news/financials/article19722704.ece
GlobalFoundries unveiled FDX Fusion in Dresden on 9 Oct, an FD-SOI chip platform built for physical AI: robots, sensors, industrial and defence systems. Manufacturing is planned to start in 2028 at its Dresden fab, whose expansion runs under the European Chips Act.
Why it matters: Europe won't win the leading-edge GPU race in the next five years. It can own the chips that sit inside machines, where power efficiency and secure supply matter more than nanometres. Dresden getting a named next-gen platform with a start date is a real product, not a press release about sovereignty.
Source: https://gf.com/news-and-events/news/gf-unveils-roadmap-to-deliver-worlds-most-advanced-platform-for-physical-ai/
Estonian defence software startup Wayren, founded in 2020 by former military software engineers, raised €7.9m from efa group and its subsidiary scytalys (Dealroom, 8 Oct). It came through the NATO DIANA accelerator in Tallinn.
Why it matters: A strategic buyer, not a VC, writing the cheque is the Baltic pattern now: defence primes shopping for software on Europe's eastern edge. Per Dealroom, the startups in that Tallinn accelerator raised €12.8m in 2025, and €7.4m of it was public money. Private capital still has to show up.
Source: https://dealroom.co/news/160837-estonias-wayren-raises-7-9-million-for-defence-software/