Building Europe’s Dual-Use Tech Future with EDT Ventures’ Hugo Jammes

Hugo Jammes is co-founder of EDT Ventures, a new venture firm seeking to back transformational founders building emerging and disruptive technologies for European defense, security and resilience.

Tell us about your path to founding EDT Ventures.

I’m the son of an Army officer and the seventh consecutive generation to serve my country. Growing up in Germany, Italy, Morocco and the United Kingdom gave me an international outlook, but service has been a consistent theme in my family. My grandfather moved to the U.K. after World War II, having served from the age of 13 in the French Resistance and then the Maquis. He’s 99 years old now and still a huge inspiration to me.

After university I joined the regular Army and was fortunate enough to serve in a wide range of missions and tasks — from partner nation capacity building to commanding soldiers on operations in Afghanistan. I left the regular military in 2015 and transferred into the Army Reserve, then started my career in finance, first at JPMorgan before moving into a boutique corporate finance house. It was there that I got my first exposure to the world of venture.

I quickly realized that venture capital shares many parallels with the military that resonated with me: managing risk, acting with integrity, motivating teams and building long-term trusted relationships are at the heart of both worlds. This felt refreshing after big finance, which tends to be more transactional and lacks the sense of mission that’s intrinsic to venture.

In 2021, I joined the U.K. National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF). NSSIF was established in 2018 to help national security and defense departments access and understand emerging and disruptive technologies. NSSIF’s most relevant counterpart in the U.S. would be In-Q-Tel. In September 2025, I co-founded EDT Ventures to address what I see as a generational opportunity in European dual-use technology.

What’s the investment philosophy behind EDT Ventures?

EDT Ventures builds on the learnings from my previous careers and the perspectives of my partners. Our philosophy is based on three main factors that make this such a compelling space to invest in. First, Europe is undergoing a generational, multi-decade transformation to rebuild its defense and industrial base, matched by historic levels of funding for innovation and new capabilities. 

Second, Europe is globally competitive at the pre-seed and seed stage but lacks the critical scale-up capital in what I call the ‘messy middle’ of Series A to C. That’s held our ecosystem back from growing international category leaders and undermines continental strategic autonomy. Third, Europe needs dual-use technologies that support both national security and economic prosperity, but we lack managers with sufficient expertise across those domains.

That’s why we are focused on building a team that can operate at the intersection of government, private capital and the entrepreneurial community. We will focus on backing high-quality founders building disruptive technologies that support defense, security and resilience across Europe.

How has the European defense tech investment landscape evolved since you started in this space?

When I started at NSSIF, very few people were interested in defense or dual-use investing. We were largely operating in a vacuum and it was our job to try to catalyze more investment into critical technologies. The war in Ukraine and rising instability in other strategic regions have helped propel dual use as a credible and vital investment theme. Reestablishing deterrence and promoting the conditions in which prosperity can prevail has become a central cornerstone of European policy.

Europe is now pursuing a technology-focused defense strategy where we not only develop the capabilities we need for deterrence but maximize the impact into commercial markets. This has fundamentally helped incentivize more capital allocators to broaden their exposure to dual-use innovations and encourage greater numbers of entrepreneurs to build solutions in this space.

What makes a good dual-use company from an investment perspective?

If we assume that conflicts of the future will see a combination of high-intensity exchanges or protracted sub-threshold contests, then it is also reasonable to assume that the critical capabilities we need are mostly rooted in dual-use innovations, from exquisite sensing capabilities to processing larger volumes of data and improving operational and organizational effectiveness. Dual-use technologies can provide decisive advantage on the battlefield while also catalyzing innovative changes across large commercial industries.

Our philosophy centers on the critical technologies that can deliver strategic advantages: secure communications, quantum technologies, synthetic biology, commercial space technologies, trusted AI and autonomy, semiconductors and advanced compute. Combinations of these technologies are often more powerful than the sum of their parts. For example, the convergence of artificial intelligence/machine learning with bioengineering could create radical breakthroughs for discovering new biological compounds, and combining space technology and quantum sensing could revolutionize intelligence work.

Successful founders building dual-use technologies are typically characterized by a unique blend of deep technical expertise, commercial acumen, strategic relationship-building and high-risk tolerance. Motivating a team around a core “mission” and delivering impact across a range of markets and customer profiles is not an easy task and so we are seeking truly differentiated leaders who can build exceptional products or services. We wouldn’t necessarily expect founders to have high “defense IQ” as that’s where we can help add value with our experience and networks.

What unique advantages does Europe have in building defense technology companies?

Europe has a uniquely advantageous positioning with many alliances and international partnerships built on decades of cooperation. We have some of the most competitive academic institutions, industrial organizations and entrepreneurs in the world and a leading position across science and technology frontiers.

It is also increasingly clear that we are in a global race toward technological advancement, a race that underpins the competition over economic power, public health, influence over potential allies, intelligence work, hybrid conflict and even military strength. The competitor who demonstrates a technological advantage on these fronts has an edge in global influence and an advantage across the spectrum of conflict, with corresponding deterrent effect. Achieving the objectives of economic prosperity and peace will not be possible without the contribution of entrepreneurs, private capital, industry, academia and governments working together.

Encouragingly, the one consensus topic across almost all European policymakers is on defense and dual-use. Europe’s transformation is a multidecade journey, representing a long-term trend that suits the venture model and supports other asset classes — so it is here to stay. The concern is that generalist VC investors are notoriously opportunistic and there will be other hype cycles that will emerge. Fortunately, there are dedicated investors in this space, those that possess deep experience and networks, who will be well-positioned to deliver both impact and alpha for the long term.

What advice do you have for founders building in the defense and dual use space?

Dual-use technology ventures have the potential to serve both large governmental and commercial markets, with multibillion-euro total addressable markets. Successful engagement with both markets is hugely influenced by the nature of the technology and the range of applications being delivered. In general, founders building dual-use technologies should focus on proactively engaging with relevant government programs and partners where the opportunity is additive to the overall commercial roadmap.

Many of the risk factors a company will have to address engaging with a government customer, such as their approach to ethics, regulation, intellectual property security, supply chain, should ultimately help them become more resilient companies (and thus, more attractive to investors or acquirers). But not every government contract leads to recurring revenue and not every application or product iteration can be replicated across the commercial stack. As with any market, ensuring you have done thorough due diligence on the customer and the opportunity and the potential to lead to larger contract volumes is key.

It is true that many investors also avoid companies that rely solely on government contracts or subsidies. While they can help with cash flow, they rarely catalyze competitive business models. Thankfully, that is now changing as major reform occurs across European government procurement pathways and increased recognition of the value of dual-use capabilities. Notwithstanding that, companies that can build proprietary technology that can be rapidly adapted as markets move and competition increases will build deeper moats and improve their ability to scale as international leaders.

This is the advantage of dual-use and defense from an investment strategy perspective — you have a much broader investment universe that is also noncorrelated and in some cases, countercyclical, spanning deep tech through generalist tech, hardware and software. That means more diversification in your portfolio, spreading risk but improving the chance of discovering key outliers. Europe is just getting started with this transition and I am hugely excited to play a part in that.

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