Erik Prince

Erik Prince is one of the defining figures of privatised warfare. A former US Navy SEAL officer, he founded the private security company Blackwater in 1997, which grew into the most prominent — and most controversial — private military contractor of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a reputation marked above all by the 2007 Nisour Square shooting in Baghdad, in which Blackwater guards killed Iraqi civilians. He later sold the company, which was renamed Xe and then Academi, and has remained active in private security, logistics, and defence ventures across several continents.

In December 2025 Prince became non-executive chairman of Swarmer, the Ukrainian drone-swarm company that went on to list on the Nasdaq. His appointment came on terms partly tied to revenue and customers he introduces, and it threads the new wave of Ukrainian defence-technology startups back into the older, contested world of private military contracting — a connection worth watching as combat-proven software firms move onto public markets.