Last week's Summit on European Digital Sovereignty in Berlin put the question of technological autonomy squarely back in focus. General Catalyst and the EU AI Champions Initiative convened a roundtable of Europe's leading innovator companies — including SPREAD, alongside our partners Rheinmetall and MBDA in Germany — to discuss how to translate commitment into capability. The conversations reinforced what the numbers already show: EU-27 defense expenditure has reached €343 billion in 2024, a 19 percent increase year-on-year, with a record €88 billion directed to equipment procurement. The political will and the capital are both in place.
Yet neither will determine Europe's strategic position. What will is the speed at which investment becomes operational capability.
Having long followed the intersection of policy, industry, and security, I find the pattern familiar: the constraint is rarely funding or talent, but rather how quickly complex organizations can turn engineering knowledge into reality. Europe has world-class engineers, proven industrial partners, and genuine political will. What it often lacks is the digital infrastructure that enables all of this to move at the pace the moment demands.
Philipp Noll, Co-founder and Managing Director at SPREAD, during the Franco-German Summit on European Digital Sovereignty with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron.
The Speed Gap
Today's defense systems bear little resemblance to those of a generation ago. They are software-defined, continuously updated, and interconnected across platforms and borders. Engineering them requires managing dependencies across thousands of components, multiple suppliers, and evolving requirements — often simultaneously.
The traditional model of sequential handoffs, siloed data, and manual validation cannot keep pace. When engineering data lives in disconnected tools, every change triggers a cascade of manual checks. Programs stall not for lack of capability, but for lack of connectivity.
The gap is not in what Europe can design, but in how quickly it can move from concept to deployment.
What Acceleration Looks Like
At SPREAD AI, we have built our Engineering Intelligence Platform around a core premise: connect engineering data across the full lifecycle, and you unlock speed without sacrificing rigor. This means digital continuity from requirements through design, validation, production, and operations — giving engineers visibility into the impact of changes before they ripple through a program.
We see this playing out in our work with leading European defense manufacturers.
Rheinmetall Air Defense faces extraordinary demand, with group sales rising 30 percent in 2024 and Electronic Solutions order intake increasing more than 400 percent. To scale without compromising quality, they are modernizing their engineering backbone. Together, we have built a Defense Digital Twin for their Skyranger systems: a live model linking requirements, components, and software dependencies across disciplines. It enables model-based systems engineering, reduces redundant testing, and supports predictive maintenance and simulation-based training—core capabilities for Europe's integrated defense readiness.
MBDA in Germany is addressing the critical interface between design and manufacturing. Using SPREAD's Product Explorer, engineering models are automatically validated against production standards, removing manual review loops. When requirements change, updates propagate through designs automatically, resulting in faster certification, stronger traceability, and accelerated iteration without compromising rigor.
These are not incremental improvements. They represent a structural shift in how defense programs can operate.
Redefining Sovereignty
European policy discussions often frame digital sovereignty around ownership — who controls the technology, where the servers reside. I believe this framing is incomplete.
True sovereignty is the ability to adapt and evolve independently, securely, and at speed. It requires three things working together: system competence, which Europe has in abundance; operational enablement through data and digital infrastructure; and interoperability through shared standards across borders.
When these converge, speed and sovereignty reinforce each other. The programs that move fastest also maintain the clearest traceability, the strongest compliance posture, and the greatest flexibility to respond to changing requirements.
The Path Forward
Every week saved in engineering strengthens Europe's industrial base and demonstrates that collaboration across the continent can deliver meaningful results.
The foundations are being laid. What is needed now is scale — connecting these digital approaches across programs, sectors, and nations. Governments have a critical role to play, not only as funders but as enablers of speed, through procurement frameworks that reward efficiency, testing regimes that permit iteration, and standards that foster interoperability.
Europe has reaffirmed its commitment to technological autonomy. The opportunity now is to match that commitment with execution.
From where I sit, Europe has everything required to lead. The question is whether it will move fast enough to prove it.