Latest Stories
Expeditions Raises €197M Fund II
If you still had any doubts that Europe was getting serious about defense (and defense tech), well, we’re back with even more evidence to prove you wrong. Yesterday, Warsaw-based VC Expeditions announced that it’s raised a €197M ($224.5M) Fund II, which it says will “address Europe’s critical capability gaps, as well as strengthen economic and […]
Exclusive: Forterra’s $114M Army-Backed Push Into Ukraine
Take a quick look around the defense startup scene, and you’ll notice that pretty much every company bills its tech as “tested in Ukraine.” Far fewer can say that they’re trusted in Ukraine. Forterra actually can. Yesterday, the ground autonomy startup revealed that it has sent over 100 Lancer autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs)—based on the […]
Exclusive: Surtr Raises $5M Seed for C-UAS Integration
Remember when Y-Combinator graduates were building food delivery startups and e-commerce sites? Yeah, those days are well and truly gone. This morning, integration startup Surtr—part of YC’s Spring ’26 cohort—announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it’s raised a $4.8M seed round to build software that brings all the different sensors, command tools, and […]
Exclusive: Aurelius Takes its Drone-Downing Lasers Mobile with Rheinmetall
Lasers and partnering with Rheinmetall…so hot right now. Directed energy startup Aurelius Systems is teaming up with the German mega-prime’s American subsidiary to integrate its drone-downing laser weapon, Archimedes, onto a Rheinmetall unmanned ground vehicle, the company exclusively told Tectonic. The partnership is the first for Aurelius and, since they aren’t planning to make ground […]
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 […]
