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Pentagon

The Marines Take Allen Control Systems’ Counter-Drone Machine Gun Mobile

Allen Control Systems certainly isn’t resting on its laurels after raising $200M at a multi-billion-dollar valuation.  The Austin-based counter-drone startup announced this week that the Marine Corps has selected its Bullfrog robo-machine gun for the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System (LMADIS), the service’s most expeditionary vehicle-based c-UAS platform, under its broader Ground Based Air […]

Tech

Ukrainian-born UFORCE Inks a Deal to Build MAGURA USVs in the US

Remember all those videos of Ukrainian sea drones taking out Russia’s Black Sea Fleet? Well, the company making those is headed stateside under a new deal with a US boat-builder.  Yesterday, British-Ukrainian defense tech startup UFORCE announced that it’s inked a deal with Oregon-based Special Operations-focused boat-builder ReconCraft to produce its now-famous MAGURA USVs on […]

Investment

Twenty Raises $30M Series B Extension from Khosla

Well, the guys over at Twenty are having quite the summer. Yesterday, just about a month after announcing their $100M Series B, the offensive cyber warfare startup announced that it’s raised yet another $30M (a Series B extension) from Khosla Ventures at a $1.2B valuation.  Founder and CEO Joe Lin told Tectonic that they’d actually […]

Investment

Exclusive: INTALUS Raises $20M for Metal-Ceramic Integration 

Gather round, kids. It’s time to get into the nuts and bolts again. So, you know how most of the tech we know and love is built out of metal? And you know how that can present some, erm, challenges, especially at super-high heats and speeds? And, also, you know how people coat that metal […]

Big Conversations Read More
Q + 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

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 […]

Q + A

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 […]

Q + A

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 […]