Dutch Ministry of Defence Bets €30 Million on Intelic Drone Software

The Dutch Ministry of Defence has signed a three-year partnership worth more than €30 million with Amsterdam-based startup Intelic to build the software foundation for its unmanned systems, becoming the first country to formally adopt a software-first strategy for military drone procurement. The deal centres on Intelic’s NEXUS command-and-control platform, which lets unmanned aerial and ground vehicles from different manufacturers operate together inside a single mission environment. The contract also gives the ministry an option to take a “golden share” with veto rights over major company decisions.

The arrangement reframes how a NATO member builds its drone fleet. Rather than buy aircraft first and integrate them later, the Netherlands is buying the connective software first and letting any drone it acquires later have to plug into it. Derk Boswijk, the state secretary for defence responsible for arms procurement, called the move a direct response to lessons from the war in Ukraine. He described the relationship with Intelic as “leaving the classic customer-supplier relationship behind” and committing to a longer-term partnership that includes joint exercises and shared software development, per Intelic’s own statement on the Dutch partnership. NEXUS has already been in operational use on the Ukrainian battlefield since 2025, the company said.

The Numbers Behind the Three-Year Deal

The contract runs for three years and is priced at “more than €30 million,” according to Resilience Media’s account of Friday’s announcement. Reuters and other outlets have described the deal more loosely as worth “tens of millions of euros,” a deliberate vagueness that Defence ministry officials have not narrowed down. The partnership covers continued development of the NEXUS software stack, integration with future Ministry of Defence drone buys, and joint exercises in which Intelic engineers work alongside Dutch soldiers to refine the platform in the field.

Intelic was founded in the Netherlands and now operates out of Amsterdam, where its small team has positioned itself as the country’s most prominent military interoperability startup. The company had earlier raised a €2 million seed round in 2024 under its former name, Avalor AI. The new contract is its first large-scale government commitment after years of pilot work, including a separate deal to provide NEXUS to the Royal Netherlands Army’s drone units that was finalised this month. For the Ministry of Defence, the price tag sits inside a wider push to get more than half of its “operational effects” from drones within five years, alongside roughly three billion euros in separate counter-drone spending.

• €30M+: contract value over three years (Resilience Media)
• 700+: European drone manufacturers, per Intelic CEO
• 9-10: countries represented on Intelic BASE at launch in May 2026
• €1.5B: combined 2026 sales expected from drone makers on BASE
• ~€3B: Dutch counter-drone defence spending already committed

What NEXUS Does, and Why It Comes First

NEXUS is a Command-and-Control, or C2, software layer designed to sit between a military operator and a mixed fleet of unmanned systems. Its job is to make drones from different manufacturers behave as a single coordinated force, regardless of who built the airframe or ground robot underneath. The software handles mission planning, real-time tasking, and the handoff of tasks between vehicles mid-operation, so an operator does not have to learn a separate control system for every drone type. By buying NEXUS first, the Ministry of Defence effectively makes it the standard any future drone purchase will need to integrate with.

Intelic CEO and co-founder Maurits Korthals Altes said Europe’s drone market had outgrown the ability of any single military to keep its software up to date. “Europe now has more than 700 drone manufacturers, and that number continues to grow,” he said in the announcement. “For defence organisations, the challenge is no longer access to technology, but ensuring those technologies can operate together.”

That framing has practical consequences for how the Dutch armed forces will buy hardware. New drones will arrive pre-validated for NEXUS, or be adapted to work with it, instead of being chosen on their own merits and then retrofitted into a fleet. The software also halves training time for operators adding new drone types, per Intelic’s own statement. NEXUS has been used on the battlefield in Ukraine since 2025, including integration with Gurzuf Defence’s Heavy Shot family of drones. The Dutch deployment will pull the company deeper into NATO’s own experiments with software-defined defence, an area where Anduril’s Lattice is already in use among allied militaries.

Drone manufacturers already signed up to Intelic BASE, the procurement marketplace built around NEXUS, include:

• Portugal: Beyond Vision
• Netherlands: DeltaQuad, Avy, Acecore Technologies, Height Technologies
• Germany: Highcat
• Latvia: Origin Robotics
• Slovakia: Airvolute
• France, United Kingdom and Ukraine: additional launch partners

What Ukraine Taught the Ministry

Boswijk has been explicit that the deal is shaped by the war in Ukraine. “Ukraine teaches us that not only the hardware, but also the software is of great importance,” he said in the announcement. “Integrating different drone systems makes the fight easier.”

Ukraine’s drone effort grew through rapid, decentralised development across hundreds of small suppliers, producing fast results early on but also leaving forces managing what Resilience Media called a “zoo of solutions” that struggled to work together. The Netherlands is reading that experience as a warning rather than a template, choosing to lock in interoperability standards before scaling its own fleet. NEXUS was already on the Ukrainian battlefield last year, and Intelic says its engineers have been iterating the software against live combat feedback. That operational record is one reason the ministry is comfortable betting on a domestic startup with a still-small team rather than a US incumbent.

A Golden-Share Option That Goes Beyond Supplier

The contract is structured as more than a software purchase. According to NL Times, which based its account on reporting by Dutch newspaper Parool, the Ministry of Defence is also negotiating the option to take a “golden share” in Intelic, a special class of equity that would give the state extraordinary voting rights, including a veto over certain company decisions. If exercised, the golden share would mark the Ministry of Defence’s first such arrangement with any company. Defence State Secretary Boswijk told Parool the goal was to keep Intelic Dutch-owned and to prevent it from being acquired by a foreign buyer or from supplying sensitive technology abroad.

The arrangement also pulls Intelic into a deeper operational role. “We are entering into a kind of partnership,” Boswijk said. “They will join us on exercises so that they can improve their software in the field, together with our soldiers.” Intelic CEO Korthals Altes said the deal gives assurance that the company will remain in the Netherlands.

The golden share option is the part that Korthals Altes has been most cautious about in public. He told Parool the terms had been “firmly negotiated” and that Intelic still wants to remain attractive to outside investors. The state veto would, in theory, allow the ministry to block future funding rounds or shareholder changes, a feature that could deter venture capital looking for clean exit paths. For the Ministry of Defence, the same veto is the point: it is buying control of the supply line, not just the code, per the Dutch report on how the ministry’s veto rights would work.

We do want our company to remain investable. If the Ministry of Defense gains a veto and can block shareholders, that could also be a deterrent.

Inside Intelic BASE, the Procurement Marketplace Built Around NEXUS

The Dutch deal is the headline, but Intelic has spent the past two months building the commercial scaffolding around it. In May 2026 the company launched Intelic BASE, a procurement marketplace where European Ministries of Defence can browse unmanned systems from multiple manufacturers already integrated with NEXUS. The platform is modelled on Ukraine’s Brave1 marketplace, which connects frontline units with drone makers, but adapted for European Union procurement rules, where ministries, not frontline units, place orders.

At launch BASE connected drone manufacturers from nine European countries, with reports putting the figure at ten once a tenth country was added shortly after. Defense News listed the named partners, including Portugal’s Beyond Vision, Dutch firms DeltaQuad, Avy, Acecore Technologies and Height Technologies, Germany’s Highcat, Latvia’s Origin Robotics and Slovakia’s Airvolute, plus partners from France, the United Kingdom and Ukraine, in its reporting on the manufacturer lineup that signed up to BASE in May. Intelic says the drone makers signed up for the first stage are expected to generate combined sales of more than €1.5 billion this year. BASE itself does not handle delivery or warranty; those remain with the manufacturers, with Intelic’s role confined to guaranteeing that the systems will interoperate through NEXUS.

Where the Dutch Bet Sits in Europe’s Drone Race

The Dutch deal is the largest single national commitment yet to a software-defined drone strategy in Europe. It also lands as rival approaches scale on different axes. In Norway, Six Robotics closed a €12 million seed round on 29 June 2026 to build swarm autonomy software, with the round led by DTCP’s new €500 million defence fund and joined by Denmark’s EIFO and Copenhagen’s Scale Capital. Six Robotics is already working with the Norwegian Armed Forces and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, per the Oslo startup’s own announcement of the seed round.

The contrast matters because both bets attack the same problem from opposite ends. Intelic sells a Command-and-Control layer that any drone has to integrate with, then runs a marketplace to make that integration easier. Six Robotics sells the autonomy that lets a fleet of drones act as a swarm once they are already in the air. Both companies pitch themselves as platform-agnostic alternatives to US software stacks like Anduril’s Lattice, which Intelic CEO Korthals Altes has acknowledged has “some overlap” with NEXUS, though he argues Intelic’s software-only model makes it more flexible for European ministries that want to mix hardware suppliers.

Intelic’s investor list now reflects that ambition. EU-Startups reported in May that the company had previously raised a €2 million seed round in 2024 under its former name, Avalor AI. The new Dutch contract, combined with the BASE marketplace and ongoing talks with other European ministries, gives Intelic a reference customer and a reference platform at the same time. For the Netherlands, the result is a seat at the front of a debate other NATO allies are now joining.

The European drone funding picture for 2026 tilts toward software. Quantum Systems secured a €150 million financing package to scale industrial production of unmanned systems. AirHub raised €4.4 million in Series A funding to build mission-critical drone operations software for security and defence. Occam Industries and Cambridge-based Mutable Tactics each raised pre-Seed rounds for frontline autonomy and AI coordination. Across these 2026 rounds, around €181 million has been reported for drone and adjacent unmanned systems innovation in Europe, according to EU-Startups.

The Risks the Ministry Is Buying Into

The Ministry of Defence has bought speed, interoperability and a domestic anchor, and it has paid for each with trade-offs. A golden share that lets the state veto shareholder changes could make Intelic a harder sell to venture investors used to clean exits, an issue Korthals Altes flagged himself. The same veto is also the lever the ministry needs to keep the company’s sensitive work from leaving the country. Buying the software first means committing to a still-young vendor’s architecture before a wider Dutch drone inventory exists, so any technical stumble at Intelic lands directly on the armed forces’ roadmap. Other European ministries now watching the deal will judge whether the Netherlands has bought a template or a one-off.

Intelic has signalled where it wants the conversation to go next. The company said it is in talks with several other European ministries of defence without naming them, and that expanding BASE to cover ground and maritime unmanned systems beyond aerial drones is on the roadmap. The first commercial test will be whether ministries outside the Netherlands buy NEXUS the way the Dutch just did, or treat the partnership as a Dutch experiment worth watching from a distance.