EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignAIHeadquarters: DE

Helsing: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Helsing is a defence technology company that develops AI software and autonomous systems for military customers. Its portfolio includes the HX-2 and HF-1 strike drones, the SG-1 Fathom underwater drone and the CA-1 Europa autonomous combat aircraft, plus software such as Altra for reconnaissance and targeting, Cirra for electronic warfare and Centaur, an AI system for fighter pilots. Helsing supplies armed forces and governments; it is not a self-service SaaS or a public software product that an ordinary organisation signs up for.

The company was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Munich. It has subsidiaries in Estonia, France and the United Kingdom, and in 2025 agreed to acquire the German aircraft maker Grob Aircraft. Investors include Prima Materia of chairman Daniel Ek, General Catalyst, Saab, Accel and Lightspeed. According to the company itself, Helsing remains majority European-owned. There is no open-source offering. For European governments and defence organisations, the relevant point is that the supplier and its development are based in Germany; no public information on data hosting was found.

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Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
    Key management with a European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 4, 2026
Headquarters
DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal
AMAZON-02 - Amazon.com, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category
AI
Type
Product
Website
helsing.ai ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Helsing

The European alternatives to Helsing come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

55 European AI vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Helsing

Helsing is headquartered in DE and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Helsing scores best on data residency.

Helsing is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Helsing together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Helsing?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Helsing include Aleph Alpha, Almato and Almawave. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Helsing?

Our list of EU alternatives to Helsing is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is Helsing GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Helsing is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Helsing an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 4, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in AI

AI: Artificial intelligence — large language models, translation, generative AI. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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8 European alternatives to Helsing — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score