Latest Stories
HavocAI Raises $100M to Accelerate Multi-Domain Push
The rise of the robots is truly upon us. Yesterday, Rhode Island-based autonomy darling HavocAI (known primarily for its USVs) announced that it’s raised a $100M Series A led by Cobalt Capital, which the company says it will use to push further into multi-domain robotics. Single-domain is soooo 2025. “We captured the maritime space already,” […]
Anduril Raises $5B Series H at $61B Valuation
Well, so much for the defense tech bubble popping. This morning, defense tech giant Anduril announced that it’s raised a $5B—yes, billion with a B—Series H at a $61B valuation led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The round brings total funding raised by the megalith to over $11B over eight rounds. “Investors have […]
Pentagon Chooses Sites for Directed Energy C-UAS Pilot Program
The energy around directed energy keeps amping up. (Again, forgive us.) Late last week, the Pentagon’s Army-led counter-drone Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401) announced five military bases selected for a directed-energy counter-UAS pilot program, focused on deploying directed-energy tech, including “high-energy lasers” and “high-powered microwave systems,” to defend the airspace from the ever-present drone […]
Saildrone Scores $15.5M USCG Contract
Well, looks like Saildrone’s $37M BPA from last summer is getting put to good use. Yesterday, the sailboat-drone company announced that it’s won a $15.5M contract with the US Coast Guard (USCG) to deploy 16 Saildrone Voyager vessels in the Great Lakes and off the US Northeast coast. “We’re augmenting the Coast Guard because they’ve […]
A Q + A with Matt Cronin, Senior National Security Advisor at a16z
If there is one VC fund you know in the defense tech world, it’s probably Andreesen Horowitz—or a16z, as the cool kids say. The firm—which just raised a casual $15B, including $1.176B for its “national interest” (defense and deep tech) focused American Dynamism fund—has backed some of the biggest names in the game, including Anduril, […]
Q + A: A.J. Bertone, Managing Partner, In-Q-Tel
If you’ve been paying attention to the past year of Tectonic (!!), you’ll recognize a sneaky three-letter acronym that pops up on a lot of defense tech cap tables: IQT. For those lucky enough not to be in the know, that stands for In-Q-Tel, a not-for-profit venture fund backed by the US government and investing […]
A Q+A with Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper
Mark Esper has spent a whole heck of a lot of time in the defense ecosystem. After a decade in uniform in the US Army, he worked as a congressional staffer, a senior policy aide to Sens. Chuck Hagel and Bill Frist, and a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the early 2000s. Then, he […]
A Q+A with Alex Ferrara, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners
If there is one fund that knows how to deploy big-time cash into tech companies, it’s Bessemer Venture Partners. The Silicon Valley fund has about $19B under management, and has invested in tech giants from LinkedIn (everyone’s fav) to Shopify. This year, the fund has turned to defense—specifically, European defense. They led Auterion’s $130M Series […]
