AINEWS
Helsing's HX 2 strike drone is in field tests through September, with Rakuten as the broker, a sign of how Tokyo is opening its defense market to foreign startups.
Japan's Ground Self-Defence Forces are running field tests of Helsing's HX-2 strike drone through the end of September. Tokyo-based Rakuten, better known for online retail, credit cards and mobile, is acting as the local broker for the Munich-based German drone maker. The choice of broker points to a structural shift: Japan's defense procurement is opening to foreign startups through consumer-tech intermediaries, because the conventional channels cannot move at the speed the China threat demands.
Helsing, a German defense and AI firm, struck an "initial agreement" earlier this year for the Japanese government to use its systems, a Munich-based spokesperson said, and disclosed the move was made possible by an unnamed "local brokerage partner." Rakuten has now been identified as that partner, according to a Rakuten spokesperson, in a Straits Times report on the arrangement, which was first reported by Japan's Nikkei newspaper. Japan's Ground Self-Defence Forces did not respond to a request for comment.
Rakuten has limited defence experience. Hideaki Mukai, Chief of Staff to Rakuten's CEO, framed the role as bridging procurement and communication barriers for startups. Foreign defense firms face Japan's layered approval cycles and a domestic supplier base built around long-standing primes. Mukai's "bridging gaps" framing captures the structural problem: consumer-tech firms with government-relations muscle, English-language fluency, and a willingness to host demonstrations can move faster than the conventional defense primes.
The pattern is not new. In late April, Rakuten helped U.S.-listed Ukrainian drone software maker Swarmer run a demonstration for a unit of Japan's military, using its AI software to coordinate a swarm of drones in a seek-and-hit mission. Rakuten's billionaire founder Hiroshi Mikitani, one of Japan's most vocal supporters of Ukraine, has used the firm to showcase other Ukrainian defense suppliers.
Tokyo has been widening the door on purpose. Japan eased its arms-export rules earlier this year, and military spending is on a multi-year surge as the country responds to China's assertiveness in the East and South China Seas. The combination pulls in overseas defense firms that previously had no realistic path into the Japanese market, and it pulls in unconventional brokers because the conventional primes are not built to onboard them at speed.
Helsing's HX-2 is a strike drone, a weaponized unmanned aircraft designed to hit ground targets, and the field tests run through September. The procurement mechanism the Rakuten arrangement exposes is now visible in two data points: a Swarmer demo in April, a Helsing field test in summer, and an open question about which consumer-tech firm brokers the next foreign defense deal in Japan.