2026 Sohn Montreal: NATO’s Former Top Commander on Why Defense Now Needs Private Capital

The keynote at the 2026 Sohn Montreal Investment Conference was not a stock pitch. It was a conversation with the man who, until recently, ran NATO’s military. General Chris Cavoli spent 38 years in the US Army, retired as a four-star general, and finished his career as Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the alliance’s most senior military officer. In 2025 he joined Valor Equity Partners. On stage with Anik Lanthier, Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Richter Family Office, he explained why he made that move.

Lanthier walked him through the health of NATO, the lessons of the war in Ukraine, the risk that the fighting spreads, and the surge in defense budgets now under way. Cavoli’s was blunt: The West spent the years after the Cold War building small numbers of exquisite, expensive weapons, and it has forgotten how to build cheap ones fast. Ukraine has shown what happens when a country has to innovate or die. And the institutions that fund defense, including the pension funds and family offices in the room, are starting to decide that backing it is a responsible thing to do.

“I think a lot of those restrictions are dying off right now,” he said of the old taboo against investing in weapons.

Cavoli joined the growth-equity firm Valor Equity Partners in 2025, capping 38 years in the US Army that ended with his retirement as a four-star general and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe. A Russia specialist educated at Princeton and Yale, he is now part of a firm that reportedly manages around $18 billion.

“We were no longer sized or equipped or trained properly”