Volume wins: scale, not exquisiteness, defines Europe's defence buildout
Key points
Key takeaways from a Sourcery interview with Onodrim Industries co-founder and CEO Aistis Šimaitis and Theon International chief strategy officer George Hadjiminas, hosted by Strike Capital's Bruno Wejchert (September 2026):
Volume over exquisiteness. Šimaitis argues Ukraine proved that in defence "you'd rather have a million of something and one of anything": anything new must be producible in tens of thousands to millions, and components such as radios that cost $30,000 a few years ago must get dramatically cheaper and far higher in volume as warfare becomes autonomous.
Onodrim's roll-up mission. Onodrim Industries is not building another prime; it acquires strong European manufacturing and critical mission-system businesses and removes the bottlenecks that stop established primes from delivering orders over the next decade.
Theon's growth story. Theon International, the established electro-optics player focused on night vision, augmented reality and head-up displays for man-portable and platform applications, listed on Euronext Amsterdam in February 2024 and has ridden a strong growth trajectory since, benefiting from the boom in European defence.
The manufacturing gap. Bruno Wejchert maps most fresh capital into neoprimes such as Helsing, but the biggest white space is a highly fragmented manufacturing base: component lead times can run to years, which is why some primes take four to five years to deliver on contracts.
Two kinds of company. Šimaitis sees the winning recipe as technology companies (AI, software, weapons final assembly and testing) collaborating with industrial companies that produce components at scale — a non-zero-sum pairing, not competition.
Europe vs the US. Hadjiminas says European technological capability is far closer to America's than commonly assumed; the differentiator is US start-ups scaling up (Anduril, Palantir) while Europe's many national champions and country-by-country procurement fragmentation hold it back, with partnerships like Anduril and Hadrian with the US government still rare in Europe.
Palantir's lesson. Šimaitis, who ran Palantir's European commercial business before founding Onodrim, cites Alex Karp's doctrine: "focus on being important and valuable and the money will come" — Palantir was unprofitable for more than 15 years before it turned.
Scale-ups over start-ups. His hottest take is that defence rewards the capacity to scale more than radical innovation, and many venture-backed companies with only €5–10 million on their balance sheets will struggle to win government trust against primes with decades of delivery history, while de facto kingmakers like Helsing and ICEYE keep eating traditional primes' share; Wejchert predicts a half-trillion-dollar European defence company founded in the last five years could emerge within a decade.
Read more: Sourcery
