Latest Stories
Aussie Sensing Startup Arkeus Raises $18M Series A
The Aussies are coming, y’all. This morning, Arkeus, an Australian defense startup building AI-powered sensing systems for drones, raised $18M in a Series A led by Aussie VC QIC Ventures to expand its global footprint, including in the US. “We are a little bit under the radar, if you can excuse the pun for a […]
Guetlein Pushes Back on CBO $1.2T Golden Dome Estimate
This article first appeared during our Inside the Dome event in our sister publication, Payload. The head of the Golden Dome program said yesterday that the CBO’s $1.2T cost estimate for the missile-defense program is way off base. “They’re not estimating what we’re building,” Gen. Michael Guetlein said Thursday at Inside the Dome, hosted by […]
Vantor and BAE Team Up
You know what sucks? When you think you’ve got a drone flying good and straight over a target, but then it turns out you’re like, super off base. Well, luckily, one prime-new kid on the block partnership is here to help. This morning, Vantor (the artist formerly known as Maxar) announced that it’s teaming up […]
The Pentagon and Five “New Entrants” Ink Low-Cost Missile Deal
The Pentagon wants more bang for its buck, and is looking to five “disruptive new entrants” to get it. Under a framework agreement announced by the Pentagon yesterday, four companies—Anduril, CoAspire, Leidos, and Zone 5—will deliver over 10,000 cruise missiles over three years under the Low-Cost Containerized Missiles (LCCM) program, while Castelion will deliver a […]
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 […]
