In the summer of 2021, Dimitrious Kottas made a move that would be unfathomable to most Silicon Valley engineers: after leaving his coveted position at Apple\u2019s Special Projects Group, he packed up his life in California and moved back to Athens to start a defense company.<\/p>\n
Three and a half years later, his startup, Delian Alliance Industries<\/a>, has set up solar-powered surveillance towers that monitor some of Greece\u2019s borders around the clock and detect wildfires on remote islands, along with a pipeline of other products, including concealed sea drones designed to keep enemies at bay. <\/p>\n But Kottas\u2019 most ambitious bet isn\u2019t on any particular technology \u2014 it\u2019s really that a small Greek startup can break through Europe\u2019s notoriously splintered defense market.<\/p>\n This may seem less of a gamble today, especially as defense tech has never been hotter, but Kottas\u2019 path to Delian has been a long work in progress, as he told this editor over a recent Zoom call. <\/p>\n After earning recognition for his academic work at the University of Minnesota on GPS-denied navigation<\/a> \u2013\u00a0 research that he says has been cited over 1,400 times \u2013 he joined Apple in 2016, where he spent six years working on autonomous systems featuring cameras, lidars, and radars. While he said he can\u2019t discuss specifics due to confidentiality agreements, the technologies he co-developed at Apple\u2019s secretive division clearly helped inform what Delian is building.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt the heart of autonomy is perception,\u201d Kottas explained, describing how machines must understand not just where objects are but what they\u2019re doing and what they intend to do. \u201cThis lies at the heart of autonomy, and given autonomy is going to be at the heart of all future weapon systems, that\u2019s the core technology that\u2019s going to drive change in the defense industry over the next decade.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t just technological insight that drove his career change, though. A series of geopolitical events \u2014 watching the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict; seeing countries look to revise their surrounding borders; and recognizing how far behind European militaries had fallen \u2014 had begun gnawing at him. \u201cI literally lost sleep,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> Rather than attempting to build the next-generation fighter jet, Kottas began with something pragmatic that he could sell more immediately: surveillance towers. The move was seemingly ripped from the playbook of eight-year-old weapons maker Anduril, which started off with software-augmented surveillance towers that it sold to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. <\/p>\n But Delian\u2019s newer products reveal bigger ambitions. The \u201cInterceptigon\u201d series features concealed autonomous aerial and sea drones and vessels designed to lie dormant until threats appear. <\/p>\n The most striking example is a two-meter suicide vessel that comes packed in a cylinder and is deployable months in advance on the seabed at depths where satellites and drones can\u2019t detect it. When remotely activated, it appears \u201cout of nowhere to the enemy,\u201d Kottas told TechCrunch, adding that Delian has patented this approach, which uses commercial materials to manufacture the weapons at \u201clarge scale and really at extremely low cost.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a model that Kottas says doesn\u2019t exist elsewhere in the Western defense industry. It has also attracted investors who just provided Delian with $14 million in funding. Indeed, the startup announced on Tuesday that its earlier backers, Air Street Capital and Marathon Venture Capital, have led its newest capital infusion, which brings Delian\u2019s total funding to date to $22 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where Kottas\u2019 story gets more complicated. Despite Delian\u2019s technological achievements and operational success in Greece, the broader European market remains a formidable challenge. U.S. officials have reportedly been pressuring<\/a> European countries to continue buying weapons from U.S. outfits. Further, European countries have long favored their homegrown defense companies, a tendency that some investors believe will make it difficult for startups like Delian to scale across borders.<\/p>\n \u201cThat concern is stronger right now in France,\u201d Kottas acknowledged, though he argued the landscape is changing. And as evidence that fragmentation is being overcome, he pointed to European Union initiatives like Safe<\/a> and ReARM Europe<\/a>, designed to encourage cross-border defense cooperation.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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