Latest Stories
Pentagon Chooses Sites for Directed Energy C-UAS Pilot Program
The energy around directed energy keeps amping up. (Again, forgive us.) Late last week, the Pentagon’s Army-led counter-drone Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401) announced five military bases selected for a directed-energy counter-UAS pilot program, focused on deploying directed-energy tech, including “high-energy lasers” and “high-powered microwave systems,” to defend the airspace from the ever-present drone […]
Saildrone Scores $15.5M USCG Contract
Well, looks like Saildrone’s $37M BPA from last summer is getting put to good use. Yesterday, the sailboat-drone company announced that it’s won a $15.5M contract with the US Coast Guard (USCG) to deploy 16 Saildrone Voyager vessels in the Great Lakes and off the US Northeast coast. “We’re augmenting the Coast Guard because they’ve […]
Exclusive: Heaviside Emerges from Stealth with $28M Series A
Well, folks, we’re starting the week off with a bang. (Forgive us.) This morning, munitions startup Heaviside came out of stealth with a $28M Series A in an exclusive release to Tectonic. The round was led by Interlagos Capital with participation from Menlo Ventures, Flume Ventures, Cantos Ventures, Anorak Ventures, Frank Finelli (senior advisor and […]
USSOCOM Taps SkyFi for Geospatial Imagery at the Edge
Up until recently, satellite imagery was the domain of well-funded intelligence services and militaries. These days, a range of commercial actors are filling OSINT social media feeds and reporting with near-real-time updates from their eyes in the skies over Ukraine, Iran, the South China Sea, and wherever else the US government is keeping tabs on. […]
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 […]
