With a growing number of flashpoints around the world, money is pouring in to defense budgets and SPACs have taken notice.
The war in Ukraine in particular has also both forced rapid innovation and provided a testing ground for a number of emerging defense technology companies. This is an ideal environment for SPACs to get involved as it is rare for so many emerging new technology firms set to hit inflection points in their own growth stories at once, with major contracts up for grabs and major catalysts incentives for intra-industry M&A.
Among the lessons of Ukraine is that the future of warfare will entail a lot of automation and managing the coming legions of robotic weaponry is a challenge that all militaries will have to face.
Saronic Technologies
One company that has already proven itself on a high-profile stage is Saronic Technologies.
It signed a $392 million contract to provide maritime drones to the US Navy in December 2025 and those unmanned boats are already in the water. In June, one of these drones rescued two US pilots whose helicopter went down in the Strait of Hormuz.
Impressively, these drones moved from prototype to production in less than a year, and the company is keeping up with the times. That initial Navy contract was for the company’s Corsair vessel model, but it has already iterated two new models in the months since, all of which use the same autonomous software backend.
These include the Mirage and Marauder that dramatically increase the range and tonnage of the Corsair. The Mirage can travel up to 2,500 nautical miles carrying a 3,500-lb payload, up from the Corsair’s 1,000-lb limit and 1,000-nautical mile range. The Marauder meanwhile increases this payload size to a full 150 metric tons that can be transported at maximum load up to 4,100 nautical miles.
The ability to do this work autonomously is potentially a game changer for the Navy and commercial clients. With the Strait of Hormuz and other waterways still dangerous and the shipping industry facing the same potentially crippling workforce shortages as heavy trucking, autonomous freight vessels could fill a critical gap.
All of this also brings some interesting elements to a SPAC process as well. Doing event-based trading around warfare is grim, but, with no end in sight to the Iran conflict, retail traders would surely notice the opportunity to play the news with a de-SPAC process in the works here similar to how they could trade around Intuitive Machine’s (NASDAQ:LUNR) Moon landing live.
Saronic is likely not desperate for SPAC cash to be clear, as it raised $1.75 billion in a March Series D that valued the company at $9.25 billion. But, it has ambitious plans in the works, including building its own shipbuilding infrastructure. And, if it aims to beat out other fast-moving tech companies in its space like Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR), having the flexibility of a public market presence could be essential.
Comand AI
A new pressure point created by this increasingly robotic warfare, however, is the strain on command to simply process all of the data and direct the robots alongside the human soldiers and sailors.
Europe is in the process of implementing a new security doctrine that applies the active mode of warfare in Ukraine to its own plans. Palantir has been a player here as well, but the continent has increasingly been looking to boost its domestic alternatives.
Paris-based Comand AI is one of these, having already integrated with the German army to provide AI-assisted military planning. In field tests, its tools helped the Bundeswehr more quickly ingest battlefield data and produce plans four times faster with analysis of the relevant terrain coming through about 10 times faster.
It is also in use in Ukraine and other NATO militaries. In Ukraine, the Comand AI system has had the chance to learn from Ukriane’s domestically-produced Delta platform that has been used to sew together the disparate drone video feeds from the field into a unified awareness tool.
Brought to its full potential, the company believes it could fully automate portions of the command-and-control chain to make sure units in the field are given a chance to execute missions faster without waiting for human analysis.
The company also secured a €32 million funding round in July that included a strategic investment by Saab (ST:SAAB), which is more known in the US for its hatchback consumer cars but is also a major defense contractor.
Comand AI is now well-positioned to potentially be the European software platform of choice for this next phase of defense development.
Alta Ares
Alta Ares is forging a similar path focused on air defense.
Both the Ukraine and Iran conflicts have demonstrated the vulnerabilities of defense plans that rely on a relatively small number of expensive interceptor missiles. Alta Ares, which is also based in Paris, has developed a number of drone interceptors that can more cheaply bring down incoming threats and do so autonomously.
The main electronic countermeasure systems currently deployed to interdict drones do so by jamming the feed between the remote pilot and the drones themselves. But, drones that are piloted internally by their own onboard AI systems can still finish their mission regardless of their connection with their home base.
Alta Ares’ Black Bird jet drones can reach speeds of up to 670 kph (about 415 mph) and fly with no human control for about 20 minutes of their journey. This can be used for either interception or strikes and the company’s shorter-ranged X-Lock drones are built to work with other drones to form swarms of interceptors against threats.
Ukrainian defense contractors have already begun using Alta Ares’ terminal guidance software and drone command-and-control systems while Airbus has integrated this into its own air defense offerings.
