Helsing unveils Clarity, European rival to Palantir's Maven

Helsing, in a Berlin statement on November 11, unveiled Clarity, an agentic intelligence platform it says is developed and built in Europe, under European control, to help armed forces process satellite, drone, sensor and other data and identify military assets. The company says a human operator reviews the evidence, selects each asset for engagement, and authorises every hand-off to a weapon.

Helsing's newsroom post did not name Palantir or Maven. The Financial Times billed Clarity as an alternative to Palantir software as European countries look for homegrown options. CNA reported that Helsing was entering a market led by Palantir, and that Palantir's Maven sits inside Pentagon and NATO workflows and has been refined through years of operational use.

What Helsing says Clarity does

The company describes a bottleneck between the volume of data armed forces now collect and the work, still done mostly by hand, of turning that data into a timely picture and preparing information needed to act. Clarity, it says, links sensor feeds, open sources, written reports and systems a unit already runs, analyses large volumes in seconds, detects military assets and positions, presents relevant adversary assets for human review, and prepares the information required by the most suitable weapon.

The platform is built around AI agents trained for military use, Helsing says, with models trained on real-world, synthetic and simulated military data, and with hundreds of agents able to work in parallel. It says Clarity never relies on a single source: a target is nominated only when independent sources agree, confidence is high, and an operator confirms. Targeting doctrine and its required gates are built in, and every decision is recorded with the person who made it.

Clarity runs on infrastructure the customer owns, according to Helsing, follows MOSA principles, implements relevant NATO standards, and can connect to effectors from any manufacturer. Data, models and operations, the company says, stay under the customer's control.

Co-CEO and co-founder Gundbert Scherf said in the statement, "A capability this critical must be sovereign. With Clarity, European armed forces get software that is built in Europe, runs on their own infrastructure and stays under their control."

What is still unknown

Helsing did not name a customer or say whether Clarity is already in service. CNA also reported that gap, and noted that Germany's armed forces have previously said they aim to begin introducing AI-enabled systems from next year. Those are not a purchase announcement for Clarity.

Codema's AI coverage and policy and safety hub follow how governments and companies put AI into high-stakes systems. What to watch is whether European forces actually buy and field Clarity, and how it is compared in use with systems such as Maven that, CNA reported, already sit inside Pentagon and NATO workflows.