This founder left Silicon Valley to challenge US defense domination from Athens, and investors are paying attention

In summer of 2021, Dimitrios Kotas took a step that would be immense for most Silicon Valley Engineers: after leaving his prestigious position as an engineering manager in Apple’s special projects group, he packed his life in California and went back to Athens to start a defense company.

After three and a half years, his startup, Delian alliance industriesThe solar-powered monitoring towers are installed, which monitors some limits of Greece around the clock and detect wildfire on remote islands, as well as a pipeline of other products, including hidden marine drones designed to keep enemies in the bay.

But the most ambitious bet of Kotus is not on any particular technology – it is actually that a small Greek startup can break through Europe’s infamous rescue market.

It may seem less than a gambling today, especially as a defense technique has never been warm, but the road to Kotus has been a long work for Delian, as he told this editor in a recent episode in a strictlevc download.

After earning recognition for its educational work at Minnesota University GPS-reestible navigation – Research that says that he has been quoted more than 1,400 times – he joined Apple in 2016, where he spent six years working on autonomous systems featuring cameras, lidars and radars. While he said that he could not discuss the nuances due to privacy agreements, the technologies he co-developed in the secret division of Apple clearly helped to inform what Delian was building.

“There is a perception in the heart of autonomy,” Kotas explained, explaining how the machines should understand where not only the objects are, but what they are doing and what they intend to do. “It lies in the heart of autonomy, and autonomy is going to be in the heart of all future arms systems, the main technology that is going to run a change in defense industry in the next decade.”

It was not just a technical insight that changed his career, though. Seeing a series of geopolitical events-Amenia-Azerbaijan conflict; See the countries look to modify their surrounding borders; And assuming how far the European had fallen behind the terrorists – started paying attention to it. “I really lost sleep,” he said.

Instead of attempting to build the next generation fighter jet, Kotas began with some practical that he could sell more immediately: monitoring towers. The move was exploded from 8-year-old arms manufacturer Enduril’s playbook, which began with software-August monitoring towers that sold us to customs and border security.

But the new products of Delian reveal great ambitions. Autonomous aerial and C drones and vessels are hidden in the “Interceptigon” series and until the threats appear, it is deactivated.

The most striking example is a two-meter suicidal vessel packed in a cylinder and deeply depth is already deployable months, where satellites and drones cannot detect it. When remotely active, it “not anywhere for the enemy,” Kotas told Techcrunch, stating that Delian has patented the approach, which uses commercial materials to manufacture weapons “on a large scale and actually very low cost.

It is a model that Kotas says that the Western defense industry does not exist anywhere else. It has also attracted investors who provided only delians with $ 14 million in funding. In fact, the startup announced on Tuesday that its earlier Backers, Air Street Capital and Marathon Venture Capital led their latest capital infusions, which brings the total funding of Delian to $ 22 million to date till date.

Here is where the story of Kottas becomes more complicated. Despite the technical achievements of Delian and operating success in Greece, the broad European market is a malignant challenge. American officials have been allegedly Pressure European countries continue to buy weapons from American organizations. In addition, European countries have long adopted their domestic defense companies, a trend that some investors believe that it will be difficult for startups such as delian to scale.

“This concern is strong in France,” Kotus accepted, although he argued that the landscape was changing. There is evidence that fragmentation is being removed, he pointed to the initiative of the European Union. Safe And Reborn europeDesigned to encourage cross -border defense cooperation.

Evidence, he insisted, already emerging, with companies like Portugal’s Tykever UnicornAnd Germany’s quantum systems are competing globally. “There are companies that raised … his American contestants, and they competed in the same market exactly, and the European counterpart won,” said Kotas.

Naturally, the question is what Kottas thinks about Enduril, and the founder is respectable, although not afraid. “It is definitely a generational company that is going to inspire many founders and military officers throughout the planet,” he said.

But he warned against handling the initial winners. “Where we are standing now, it is like 2015 for self-driving cars … then trying to predict the winner.”

Nevertheless, the question is whether a Greek Startup – no matter how innovative – French, German, or British Defense establishments can convince the establishments to stake their national security on foreign technology. Kotas has recently presented a bid for a German tender, a test case for their thesis that a decentralized Europe can be removed through better technology and competitive pricing.

Meanwhile, what many defense techniques can set a separate coatus from entrepreneurs, it is how the mission seems. Referring to aerospace and defense legendary lockheed Martin, Kotas reflected that it is “different to make weapons in New Mexico that is being used on the other side of the planet.

Bhavna can prove to be the greatest property of delinen, as it is shared by entrepreneurs across Europe who see conflict not as an abstract possibility but as a living reality. It focuses on low cost, rapidly deployed systems of the company, which can be brainstorming on the scale, and interprets its emphasis on technology that can be pre-tainted and active when needed. It can eventually explain to other European countries that geography matters more than nationality when it comes to defense.

Either way, the unconventional journey of Kotus from Athens to MinoriaPolis and back to Athens suggests that it is comfortable with long obstacles.

A small market on a continent has a “advantage of building a company” known for its balconies. He said, “This forces you to be more flexible, more efficient, and in fact to focus on the creation of great technology at a really low price point, which matters in this business,” he said.

“I think the fragmentation will go away in the coming years, and if you play it right then you can turn it into your profit.”