At RAAIS 2026, Nathan Benaich sits down with Hadrien Canter, co-founder and CEO of Alta Ares, the air-defense company building AI-guided interceptors to shoot down cheap drones and cruise missiles. They get into why Europe has lost air superiority for the first time in modern history, what the data loop looks like when you run it on a freezing front line instead of a laptop, why "quantity is the quality" in the industrialization race, and how the talent pool is shifting toward European defense. Recorded live at RAAIS 2026 in London.
Chapters
00:00 — Introducing Hadrien Canter and Alta Ares
00:47 — 2022 in Ukraine, and how Europe lost air superiority
03:23 — The Series A and the Airbus partnership
05:13 — The data loop, edge AI, and the three phases of a mission
08:22 — What no simulation can reproduce
10:09 — Hiring for the mission; defense as the precondition for peace
12:36 — Open research questions and the human in the loop
14:22 — How the adversary uses AI: evasive Shaheds, drone mesh, China
17:27 — Two interceptors, and why quantity is the quality
20:50 — Iron Dome math, budgets, and peace-time vs war-time
23:41 — Q&A: keeping pace with a fast-changing front
26:31 — Q&A: talent and the shift toward European defense
29:30 — Q&A: re-arming without permanent war
32:56 — Freedom doesn't come for free
