Latest Stories
Shift5 Joins Anduril’s NGC2 Team
Anduril sure has a knack for making friends. Yesterday, defense and transportation-focused startup Shift5 announced that they’re joining Anduril’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) prototyping effort to bring its predictive maintenance magic to the Army’s 4th Infantry Division’s vehicles. Race to integrate: We’ve covered the Army’s NGC2 program a lot, so we’ll keep it […]
Exclusive: Energetics Startup CMG Emerges from Stealth to Bring More Boom
Defense tech isn’t all drone swarms and software. Sometimes the basic stuff is the most important. Today, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, Texas-based energetic material startup Critical Materials Group (CMG) emerged from stealth to solve an old problem with new tech: Making more of the stuff that makes things go boom, starting with C-4, […]
Aalyria Raises $100M at a $1.3B Valuation
Move over, drones. This week is all about the science fiction-y stuff (well, at least for now). Yesterday, connectivity company (and Google spinout) Aalyria announced that it’s raised a $100M Series B at a whopping $1.3B valuation led by Battery Ventures and J2 Ventures, with participation from DYNE and others. Aalyria CEO Chris Taylor told […]
Quantum Systems Unveils New UGV
Quantum Systems is officially entering the ground autonomy game, baby. Earlier today, German autonomy hotshot Quantum Systems introduced MANDRILL, its first unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), at the Enforce Tac trade show in Nuremberg. The $3.5B startup, better known for its aerial drones, called it the first in a line of UGVs designed to work with […]
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 […]
