Varma invests €68m more in drone defence firm Sensofusion as Helsinki listing values it at about €1.6bn
The pension insurer is one of four cornerstone investors in Sensofusion’s share offering, which was oversubscribed several times. The counter-drone company says its revenue more than doubled in the first half of 2026.
Martti Asikainen |13.10.2026 | Photo by Sensofusion
Finnish pension insurer Varma has invested about €68 million more in drone detection and counter-drone company Sensofusion, which listed on Nasdaq Helsinki this month, Varma said on 9 October.
Varma is one of four cornerstone investors, meaning investors that commit to buy shares before an offering opens. Together they committed about €170 million, according to Sensofusion.
The others are pension insurers Elo and Ilmarinen and funds managed by OP Fund Management.
Oversubscribed several times
Sensofusion’s board completed the offering on 8 October at €16.41 per share. That values the company at about €1.3 billion before the offering and about €1.6 billion after it, assuming the share issue and over-allotment option are fully used. Gross proceeds are about €300 million with the option, or about €259 million without it, and selling shareholders receive about €16 million. The offering was oversubscribed several times, and the company expects more than 21,800 shareholders.
Shares began trading on Nasdaq Helsinki’s prelist on 9 October, and the move to the main market is due on 13 October. On the first day the first trade was at €18.20 and the price reached €19, then eased to around €17.40, according to Swedish business magazine EFN. Henrik Husman, president of Nasdaq Helsinki, called it “one of the largest IPOs in Helsinki in 20 years”.
The company says it will spend the proceeds on research and development, expanded production and testing capacity, and a stronger balance sheet.
One of four cornerstones
Varma had already joined Sensofusion’s €45 million funding round before the listing. It also made a follow-on investment of about €51 million in AI cloud firm Verda on 22 September. Varma says it has funded Finnish growth companies with more than €1 billion over five years. It manages private-sector pension assets, with investments worth €71.4 billion at the end of June.
Timo Sallinen, Varma’s investment director for listed investments, called Sensofusion an “exceptional defence industry company”. In addition to strong growth, he said, its business is already profitable. Sensofusion’s chief executive, Tuomas Rasila, said Varma was the first investor he phoned when he approached cornerstone investors.
Revenue more than doubled
Sensofusion sells detection and countermeasure systems against drones, mainly to defence and security authorities, which provided 98.5% of its 2025 revenue. Its Airfence 7 and Airfence Mini products number in the hundreds in operational use, and management says they are used in Ukraine and the Middle East. Ukraine accounted for 7% of 2025 revenue.
The company’s audited revenue in 2025 was €35.1 million, up 87.8%. In the first half of 2026 revenue was €26.0 million, up 122.3%, with an operating profit of €13.5 million, or 51.9% of revenue. Those half-year figures are unaudited. Staff numbers rose to 111 at the end of June from 47 a year earlier.
Rasila, the founder, remains its largest shareholder through Haave Oy and plans to stay as chief executive. “I want Sensofusion to outgrow its founder,” he said.
The €1.6 billion valuation is about 46 times the company’s audited 2025 revenue, a figure calculated from its own numbers. It rests on continued rapid growth from a customer base made up almost entirely of defence and security buyers. The company says its financial targets are not forecasts. The over-allotment option can be exercised until about 8 November, so the final size of the offering is not yet settled.
