EUACCDaily Pulse #08 · 18 Jun 2026
Two of Europe's biggest tech investors, Earlybird and AVP, are raising a EUR500m fund aimed only at defence and dual-use. It is private capital built to stop European defence startups shipping their scale-up rounds, and their IP, across the Atlantic.
💶FUNDING
A EUR500m fund for the missing layer
On 18 June, Earlybird and AVP (AXA Venture Partners) launched E2D, a EUR500 million European defence and dual-use growth fund, one of the larger Franco-German tech tie-ups to date.
It is deliberately growth-stage, not seed: about 20 companies, an average cheque near EUR25 million, spanning the space, air, land, maritime and subsurface domains. The first close is 30 June, anchored by major financial institutions and corporates as limited partners. The backdrop is the largest shift in European security spending in a generation: France EUR76bn, Germany EUR152bn, and the EU's EUR800bn defence plan.
🧭WHY IT MATTERS
Private money meets the public push
The timing is the signal. E2D's first close lands on 30 June, the exact day the EIC's STEP Scale Up Defence call opens the first-ever direct public equity into the sector. Public and private capital are converging on the same week, and the same problem.
That problem is the scale-up gap. Europe builds defence and dual-use startups well, but founders have long had to cross the Atlantic for Series B and beyond, exporting capital, talent and IP in the process. For a founder, the lesson is that the new money is concentrating exactly there: a EUR25m-plus round in defence or dual-use no longer means a US lead by default. Line up the public anchor (EIC) and the private growth lead (funds like E2D) as two halves of the same stack.
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