Latest Stories
ACMI Scores $50M for Indian Head Energetics Campus
If you’re a regular reader of Tectonic, you’ll know that the US has a bit of an energetics problem. Luckily, one organization is setting out to try and fix that. Earlier this week, ACMI Federal (part of the American Center for Manufacturing & Innovation) announced that it’s won $50M from the Naval Surface Warfare Center, […]
Skydio Raises $110M at $4.4B Valuation
The drone dollars keep on coming. Yesterday, California-based drone hotshot Skydio announced a $110M Series F, boosting its valuation from $2.5B after its 2024 Series E extension to an eye-watering $4.4B. The raise comes exactly a month after the company snagged a $52M US Army contract for 2,500 of its X10D small-UAS—the largest sUAS order […]
Fortem Secures $25M Investment from Lockheed Martin
Looks like the big dogs are finally realizing that a lot of the tech they need might very well be sitting right here in startup land. Yesterday, up-and-coming defense company Lockheed Martin announced a $25M investment into Utah-based counter-drone startup Fortem Technologies, a sum that represents, according to the prime, “the initial tranche of Fortem’s […]
Exclusive: Vermeer Expands to India
Vermeer CEO Brian Streem is quickly becoming Mr. Worldwide. This morning, the Ukrainian-American drone visual navigation startup announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it’s expanding operations to India and will begin selling its systems there through a local partner called Athena Intelligent Solutions. The team-up means Vermeer now has direct access to the […]
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 […]
