Latest Stories
HII Taps GrayMatter Robotics For Some Shipbuilding Startup Spice
The great startup-prime team-up continues in full force. Shipbuilding giant HII and manufacturing robotics startup GrayMatter Robotics inked a deal on Monday to bring AI-powered robotics to the most unsexy parts of the shipbuilding process—like surface prep, grinding, coating, and inspection—with the goal of speeding up the lethargic pace of building new Navy vessels. Factory […]
X-Bow Inks $12.2M Rocket Motor Contract with AEVEX
Busy times for rocket motor-makers. Yesterday, solid rocket motor (SRM) startup X-Bow Systems snagged a $12.2M contract for “thousands” of rocket-assisted take-off (RATO) kits—including SRMs and launchers—for defense technology company Aevex’s 200lb Disruptor drone. Big drone, big boom. We like it. X marks the spot: X-Bow, pronounced “crossbow,” is on a mission to shake up […]
Hermeus Raises $350M Series C at $1B Valuation
Well, if you thought that the LA defense tech scene couldn’t get any hotter, think again. Yesterday, super-ultra-fast aircraft company Hermeus announced that they’ve raised a cool $350M Series C at a $1B valuation and that they’re building a big ol’ HQ in El Segundo. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with continued support […]
Cummings Successfully Demos Anti-Armor Warhead
Well, the dronemakers are certainly stepping up their game. This morning, Huntsville-based Cummings Aerospace announced that they’ve successfully completed arena testing for an anti-armor warhead for their three-foot-long Hellhound S3 drone. Cummings founder and CEO Sheila Cummings told Tectonic that the warhead-equipped drone was able to blast through several sheets of steel—mimicking a tank or […]
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 […]
