Latest Stories
Anduril Scores Army Contract Worth Up to $20B
Y’all ever have those moments where you read a story, scroll past, do a double-take, and then scroll back like, “F**ck me.” Yeah, this is one of those. On Friday, the US Army announced (in a fairly chill contract roundup) that it’s issued a 10-year contract worth up to $20B—yes, billion with a B—to “consolidate […]
Australian Rare-Earths Miner Lynas Inks $96M Pentagon Deal
Between the Pentagon backing a $400M investment in MP Materials, a $1.4B deal with rare-earth magnet-maker Vulcan Elements, and Korea Zinc’s $7.4B refinery in Tennessee, companies up and down the critical mineral supply chain had a pretty big year in 2025. And the Pentagon’s demand for rare earths sure isn’t slowing down in 2026. Yesterday, […]
The Navy and DIU Tap Anduril’s Dive-XL for Drone Sub Program
Sounds like it’s time for Palmer Luckey to bust out the bikini again. On Thursday, everyone’s favorite teeny tiny defense startup Anduril announced that their Dive-XL autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) was tapped by the Defense Innovation Unit and the US Navy for the Combat Autonomous Maritime Platform (CAMP) drone sub program. Deep Dive: In case […]
ICYMI: Rune Scores $2M SBIR with the US Army
Big day for the unsexy side of defense. On Thursday, military logistics startup Rune Technologies announced that they’ve scored a $2M Direct to Phase II SBIR contract with the US Army in support of the service’s PORTAL (Predict, Optimize, Recommend, and Track for Adaptive Logistics) program. The company says that over the next 18 months, […]
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 […]
