Drone Startup CEO Sees NATO Interest After Winning US Contract

Drone software maker Auterion’s chief executive officer said several NATO members have shown a strong interest in rapidly building up their arsenals of unmanned aerial vehicles as Europe gears up for a rearmament drive.

Auterion has partnered with a Ukrainian company it didn’t identify to make drones cheap enough for armies to acquire tens of thousands of units, CEO Lorenz Meier said in an interview. 

“We are in touch with all the larger NATO countries,” he said. “There’s strong interest in procuring drones urgently.”

The Arlington, Virginia-based company’s prototype was one of four autonomous attack drones selected for testing last week by a unit of the US Department of Defense as Washington seeks to develop low-cost, long-range weapons similar to ones that have been used to target energy infrastructure in the war in Ukraine. Potential adversaries including China and Iran have a range of such aircraft, some capable of striking deep behind enemy lines, that are far cheaper to produce than the cruise missiles western armies often rely on. 

Auterion’s prototype can hit targets over 1,000 kilometers away and can navigate accurately when facing electromagnetic jamming, Meier said. He declined to provide the value of the US contract, but said he expects the deal to lead to a follow-up contract to build a long-range drone platform. 

Meier said that Auterion’s technology would be a “conceptual fit” for a potential conflict with China over Taiwan and it is also appealing for European Union members seeking to bulk up their militaries. 

European governments are preparing to spend hundreds of billions of euros on defense to reduce dependence on Washington. US President Donald Trump has cast doubt on American support for Ukraine and post-World War II security arrangements, prompting the strategic rethink in Europe.

In December, Auterion and Germany’s largest defense contractor Rheinmetall AG entered a partnership centered on joint development of drone software. 

Auterion provides operating systems for aerial, land and naval drones. Meier began developing drones capable of flying autonomously using computer vision as part of a research project for his master’s degree at ETH Zurich university in Switzerland, before he helped found Auterion in 2017. It now has over 100 employees in Arlington, Munich and Zurich. 

Auterion is in talks with US consumer electronics manufacturing companies to ramp up drone production, according to Meier. “They are excited to build gigafactories for drones,” Meier said.

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