Axel Henriksen

Axel Henriksen is a Danish entrepreneur based in Copenhagen. He is building Varn Industries, a defence-technology company developing a sovereign defence-AI stack for Europe – real-time multi-source data fusion paired with counter-UAS interceptor drones.

The thesis is simple: in the wake of the war in Ukraine, Europe needs to stand on its own feet. Defence capability has to be built on European supply chains, European designs, and European trust boundaries. Varn is built hardware-fluent, software-driven, and designed to scale across NATO. Henriksen has been building drones since he was 12 and is self-taught across hardware, software, and applied machine learning. Varn is currently pre-seed in the prototype-to-MVP stage and applying to Defence Tech Denmark.

To bootstrap the runway he runs NORTH, a Scandinavian travelling nightclub concept being established as a season-long residency in Ayia Napa, Cyprus for 2026. Mykonos and Marbella follow in 2027. NORTH funds the runway; Varn is the bet. Alongside, he is founder of Tableone (tableone.dk), a concierge service for private chefs and reservations at the world's most exclusive restaurants.

Henriksen is educated at Shattuck-Saint Mary's School, an American boarding school in Faribault, Minnesota. He speaks Danish and English and works primarily in English on his international projects. He commutes between Copenhagen and Cyprus around NORTH's seasons.