European Defence Tech 2025: The Talent Lens, by The Big Search x Dealroom
We partnered with Dealroom and Resilience Media to build the 2025 European Defence Tech Report. As part of that work, we conducted four focused talent mappings:
(1) European defence founders,
(2) Defence C-level executives,
(3) Defence commercial leaders from Head- to C-level,
(4) Defence-focused investors across both generalist and specialist funds.
In total, we mapped +4.000 professionals across 624 European defence tech companies and 82 funds active in this sector1. The full report is on Dealroom, but here you’ll find the key insights from our talent analysis.
As you already know, the sector has clear momentum. VC investment in European defence and defence-application tech startups is projected to reach $2.3 billion by the end of 2025, up 130% versus 2024. The market has grown considerably over the past few months/years, attracting more and more talent, founders, and investors. Yet it’s still a relatively new space in VC, with a fresh cohort of companies scaling fast, which makes a talent-first view of the landscape particularly interesting.