Latest Stories
Exclusive: Firehawk Caps Off Factory Double-Header with a Rocket Contract
It’s been a busy few days for the folks over at Firehawk. Yesterday, energetics and rocket motor-maker Firehawk Aerospace cut the ribbon at a big ol’ rocket integration facility in Mississippi, where, as told in an exclusive release to Tectonic, the company has snagged a contract to assemble Hydra-70 rockets. To cap things off, they’ll […]
Inbiome Raises $16M Led by NIF
In case you weren’t aware, defense isn’t always about the stuff that goes boom. Sometimes it’s about the (arguably much scarier) stuff we can’t immediately see. Lucky for us, a newly funded startup is here to help. This morning, Dutch biotech company Inbiome announced that it has raised a $16M Series A co-led by the […]
Exclusive: Acoustic Drone-Sensing Startup RADD Emerges from Stealth
If you’ve seen—or been on—the battlefield in Ukraine, one of the most significant shifts in drone warfare has been the proliferation of fiber-optic FPV drones. There’s a good reason for that: most UAV detection tech relies on RF sensing or expensive radars, which can be easily sidestepped—or saturated—by RF-silent drones. Enter brand-spanking-new startup RADD. This […]
Saronic Raises $1.75B Series D
If anyone thought the hype for maritime would fade, what with the whole “potential extended ground war in Iran” thing, think again. This morning, autonomous maritime giant Saronic announced that it’s raised a $1.75B Series D—yes, billion with a “B”—at a $9.25B post-money valuation. Again, yes, that’s all with a “B”. The round was led […]
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 […]
