In 2015, Florian Seibel was fed up. He had spent the past 16 years in the German armed forces, and was frustrated with the military’s painfully-long procurement cycles. That’s why, when he founded Quantum Systems, a startup that builds AI-powered unmanned aerial surveillance drones, the plan back then was to focus on agricultural applications as “that was the use case” at the time. But in 2019 the company shifted to work on dual-use drones with military applications.

Interview
July 2, 2024
VCs ‘all have this FOMO now’, says founder of AI drone startup Quantum Systems and weapons startup Stark
Florian Seibel, a German military vet, thinks there's hype around defence tech: "I could tell [some VCs] anything, and they would believe me. That is shocking to me"
6 min read
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