From day one at Mission-K in Kalkar, Torsten Kriening speaks with Dr. Sabine Hampel, founder of GRIF, who is hosting the Startup Dome within the event’s Experience Colony.
When the two last met around eighteen months ago, GRIF existed only as a vision. Today it is a venture capital fund based in Luxembourg, founded in July last year, investing from pre-seed through Series B across defence, aviation and space, cybersecurity, and the protection of critical infrastructure. The founding team brings substantial financial credentials from the public markets, including decades of asset management experience and Hampel’s own background as an equity portfolio manager responsible for several hundred million in assets. Equally important, she stresses, is the fund’s strong military backbone: Hampel served twelve years in the German Navy, experience she describes with evident pride and which shapes GRIF’s entire approach.
Her diagnosis of Europe’s central challenge is unambiguous: missing European private capital. Public money is available, and she regards that as a positive signal from European society – but it must be leveraged by private investment. Citing figures for last year, she notes that of roughly €1.8 billion invested in the security, defence and space sector, the clear majority originated in the United States. The underlying problem, as she sees it, is a shortage of European funds capable of scaling startups through Series A, B and C, compounded by an investment culture in which the typical European investor looks first for the risks and challenges rather than the opportunities. Change is beginning, she says, but education is needed to encourage private market investment.
Her second point may be even more consequential. Many funds wish to enter the defence sector, but relatively few can identify a genuine use case. Defence, she argues, cannot be approached like deep tech: it demands real military knowledge – understanding who to speak to, which systems a technology could integrate with, whether it can be standardised and scaled, and how NATO operates, not merely national procurement. Without that understanding, she warns, a business case will be dead within five years, whereas the goal should be companies strong enough to survive the next twenty.
Hampel also highlights the companies showcased in her dome, including a portfolio company preparing for an orbital launch – an investment case she values precisely because it combines commercial and military potential, supported by an accurate, visionary engineering team.
