Lakestar's Chris Magazzeni: Europe's defence tech will consolidate into 5 to 10 neo-primes

What's the story? Lakestar's Chris Magazzeni expects European defence tech to shift from a funding frenzy to consolidation, with more mergers and acquisitions coming. Speaking with Resilience Media editor-in-chief Tobias Stone at the Resilience Conference in London in October, he said Europe will likely end up with 5 to 10 neo-primes, "probably not that much more."

Why consolidation? Governments look for "two to three suppliers, maximum, for given products" and "historically have only a handful of relationships, they're not going to suddenly have hundreds, so [the consolidation] is inevitable." The winners will be those that "can deliver at scale." Capital is already concentrating: "You can just look at who has raised 500 million, a billion, in the last six months. The number of companies is quite small."

What sets the pace? Magazzeni named three factors for whether consolidation accelerates over the next 18 months: competition from funds trying to keep startups independent for longer; whether neo-primes buy early and pay up or wait; and whether they acquire smaller companies to round out what they can offer customers, rather than their main rivals. He also flagged the risk that the new neo-primes lose agility like legacy primes, and pointed to Ukraine's policies as a model for keeping them innovative.

Source: Resilience Media, by Stanislaw Naklicki (5 Nov 2026), shared by Resilience Media on LinkedIn.