European Defense Tech Hub

Bringing innovators together at the intersection of deep tech and dual-use in Europe through meetups, hackathons, and online events

Co-Founder

Future of Computing

Every week, I interview startup founders and industry experts working on the future of computing to bring you the latest insights from this exciting field. Every edition reaches a few thousand entrepreneurs, investors, and computing geeks.

Founder

Lunar Ventures

Lunar Ventures invests pre-seed/seed in computer science moonshots e.g. in cryptography, machine learning, databases, developer tools, and much more.

If you’re a technical founder whose struggle is to explain your vision to investors, we set up a fund for you. We invest pre-revenue to help turn your sci-fi idea into reality: www.lunar.vc

Venture Partner

It's been two incredible years at Lunar Ventures, where I've had the chance to learn a ton about VC and deep tech, meet many great entrepreneurs and fellow investors, and lead our investment in SemiQon – a Finnish quantum hardware startup, building silicon-based quantum processors for the million-qubit era.

Associate

Visual Ink Publishing

We are a publishing company based in Germany focusing on open-source publishing and open education

2hearts

Building tomorrow's tech society with cultural diversity: 2hearts is a community of people with immigration backgrounds from the tech scene (founders, investors, top executives) with the mission to empower great talent with immigration backgrounds to enrich Europe`s tech economy.

Community Member

Entrepreneur First

Entrepreneur First brings together extraordinary people to build startups from scratch in London, Singapore, Berlin, Toronto, Paris, and Bangalore. EF funds individuals and helps build co-founding teams, develop ideas, and accelerate through fundraising from the world's best investors.

BE8 Cohort Member at Entrepreneur First Berlin

University of Karlsruhe

Ph.D. at the Institute for Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics (TFP) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology: www.tfp.kit.edu

PhD Student in Physics

Technische Universität Dresden

I began my PhD at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of TU Dresden within the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 1143 "Correlated Magnetism: From Frustration to Topology", dealing with the phase diagram of chiral antiferromagnets on mean-field level. It involves both analytical calculations from quantum many body theory and numerical simulations based on Python programming. 

In the end, we are doing basic research investigating why some materials are magnetic while others are not and what sorts of magnetism do exist. This turns out to be much richer than one might think considering just ferromagnets such as iron, as some materials called helimagnets are hosting spin spirals or so-called skyrmions constituting topological structures. Investigating the properties of exactly these helimagnets is main focus of our research.

https://tu-dresden.de/mn/physik/itp/tfp

Completed my Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the age of 24, bootstrapping my own publishing house, Visual Ink Publishing, and interviewing startup founders and industry experts for my blog: 

www.future-of-computing.com

As a venture partner, I am helping Lunar Ventures invest in deep-tech startups shaping the future of computing, from novel AI chips to leveraging AI for materials development.

Generally, Lunar invests 0.5 - 1.5M at pre-seed/seed in computer science moonshots, e.g., in cryptography, machine learning, databases, developer tools, and much more.

– feel free to contact me via LinkedIn or email at mail@benjaminwolba.com

www.benjaminwolba.com

Excited to contribute to the Estonian Defence Week with our shortest hackathon ever — the "Defense Hack Day" 🚀 

📅 September 25, 9:00–18:00
📍 Tallinn Creative Hub, Small Hall

Great to have Helsing as our key partner, alongside C2Grid, Pilotix, Snake Island Institute, the Ukrainian MoD, and mentors from the Armed Forces of Ukraine and DroneAid Collective 

What’s happening:
 ⚡ Challenge briefings in the morning
 ⚡ Intense, all-day hacking
 ⚡ A hands-on drone-building workshop
 ⚡ Evening pitches showcasing real breakthroughs

Proud to co-organize the Estonian Defence Week with the Estonian Defence and Aerospace Industry Association, Tangent Link, NATO DIANA Estonian Accelerator, and the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS)

👉 Join us in Tallinn on September 25!

Benjamin Wolba

eurodefense.tech | Fostering Defense Innovation for European Sovereignty | Blogging at future-of-computing.com

Integration may not be driven top-down but bottom-up 🦾

81% back a common EU defense policy — and in Germany, more people now prefer a European army over NATO or national defense

Citizens want Europe to defend itself. 

That’s why we need a pan-European approach to security and defense.

And that’s why we launched the European Defense Tech Hub to be pan-European from day one. We’re going country by country, finding committed builders, and running defense tech hackathons to bring fresh talent into the sector across Europe.

We don’t wait for top-down coordination. We build bottom-up 🫡

Hosting our first-ever Berlin Energy Hackathon this weekend — with 100+ hackers already signed up, it’s set to be ⚡️

Huge thanks to our host, The Delta Campus, and our partners VOLTAIC, MaxxWatt, and Libergy! 

Europe needs to build its own path — moving beyond dependence on ruzzian oil and gas and American LPG.

The future is built on innovation, collaboration, and a truly sovereign energy system — here's your call to action to shape critical infrastructure, accelerate the energy transition, and strengthen European resilience 🦾

This will be more than a hackathon — we're launching a new community to drive the future of critical infrastructure, and true energy abundance & resilience: The European Energy Collective 

Philipp Ritzinger Berat Ergün Osten Jap

Having TNW as a media partner of our European Defense Tech Hackathon in Amsterdam last March was a real highlight this year 

It was great working with Yeni Joseph, Oliviana Bailey, Zach Butler, Arno Nijhof, Thomas Macaulay, and the team, and eventually being part of the TNW conference in June 

All the best for what comes next!

Returning to Kyiv to host one of our most consequential European Defense Tech Hackathons this year — right at the heart of Ukraine 🇺🇦

🚨 Announcing the European Defense Tech Hackathon in Kyiv

From November 6–9, we’re bringing together 200+ hackers, mentors, and military experts in Kyiv to tackle some of the world’s most urgent security challenges — with a special focus on air defense 🚀

Building on the momentum of our Lviv hackathon last May, we’ve already seen alumni travel to Ukraine — some even spending months in Kyiv to develop their prototypes into field-ready products.

Now, we’re returning to Kyiv to host one of the most consequential defense tech gatherings of the year — right at the heart of Ukraine 🇺🇦

With a spotlight on air defense, from high-flying Shahed drones to small fiber-optic drones, we’ll address a broad range of critical challenges alongside some of the best experts in the world — with one clear goal: 

To bring more talent into defense and help them make a real impact! 

We’re proud to have TYTAN Technologies, D3 Venture Capital Firm, Pilotix, and DroneAid Collective as our first partners, and to co-organize this event with Moodro, Snake Island Institute, and Inflection.xyz

If you’re an engineer, innovator, or defense technologist passionate about solving real-world challenges, Kyiv is the place to be! 

Alina Kizlevych, Viktoriia Honcharuk, Akim Karpach 🇺🇦, Valeriia Kosiak, Benjamin Wolba, Jonatan H. Luther-Bergquist

Defense tech companies in Europe need contracts and thus revenue—not just investment

Benjamin Wolba, Co-founder of European Defense Tech on the bottlenecks facing Europe's defense tech. 

The talent problem is severe.

"We're seeing a lot of M&A lately in the defence industry... not just due to technological necessity, but it's also just due to talent scarcity." 

Every man and his dog" starting defense tech VCs

"Early stage funding is comparatively fine compared to late stage funding. Who's putting the 20 mil into your series B?"

"If we want to keep those companies in Europe and building for Europe, they need to run."

You can listen to the full conversation with Benjamin below 👇

Nothing Ventured Nothing Gained. Follow viraj & VENTURES 🚀 for more

𝐌𝐚𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞’𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐲𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐎𝐜𝐭 𝟏𝟕–𝟏𝟖 — Thrilled to be co-organizing with the European Defense Tech Hub! 🚀

𝐌𝐚𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞’𝐬 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐂𝐲𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐇𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐎𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 17–18, 2025. 

This event will bring together the brightest minds in space exploration, cybersecurity, and telecom to tackle one of today’s most urgent challenges: protecting Europe’s satellites and communications networks from cyberattacks.

In just 24 hours, participants will:
 ✨ Build practical software solutions to safeguard satellites, GPS, and telecom networks.
 ✨ Test their skills against real-world space cyber threats.
 ✨ Collaborate with space agencies, defense stakeholders, startups, and tech innovators.

Read more details at THESIGN.MEDIA: https://lnkd.in/eF6wdZ55

Registration for participants: https://luma.com/u81cjnoz

💡 Open Call: We are inviting supporters, mentors, and experts to join the hackathon and guide participants through real-world space cybersecurity challenges. 

#hackathon #spacetech #spacecybersecurity #cyberdefense #cybersecurity #defensetech #innovation #partnership

The space economy is just getting started — great interview by Emily Eisenblätter with Philip Johnston from Starcloud 🚀

❤️‍🔥🛰️ 𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝘆 𝗳𝗮𝘃𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱: 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝘀 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲.

Terrestrial data centers are hitting limits around power availability, cooling efficiency, and permitting. Starcloud is taking compute off-planet, where uninterrupted solar energy, natural cooling by the vacuum of space, and no terrestrial red tape offer a new frontier for infrastructure.

For Future of Computing, I spoke with co-founder and CEO Philip Johnston about how they’re turning that vision into reality.

Their first commercial satellite launches in 2026 with a GPU cluster of NVIDIA H100s and proprietary thermal and power systems. It’s designed to deliver edge compute for other satellites and prove that terrestrial GPUs can operate reliably in orbit. 

Starcloud has already raised $21M (one of the largest-ever seed rounds post-Y Combinator) from NFX, In-Q-Tel, NVIDIA Inception, 468 Capital, and others.

🔗 Link to the full interview in the comments.

#FutureOfComputing #SpaceTech #AIInfrastructure #DataCenters #DeepTech Benjamin Wolba

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