Latest Stories
Anduril Wins $363M CBP Contract for XR Sentry Towers
Lest you thought Anduril was turning its gaze fully abroad with all that “international weapons hub” talk, think again. This morning, the defense tech megalith announced that it’s won a $363M contract with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for “more than 200 Extended Range Sentry Towers (XRST)…to expand autonomous situational awareness across a much […]
Picogrid Providing Integration for Perennial Autonomy’s Merops
If there’s one thing you’ve learned from this newsletter lately, we hope it’s that integration is one of the least sexy but most important parts of getting technology deployed (and actually working) on the battlefield. After all, building a super-fast interceptor or the world’s best UAV is great. But if those platforms can’t connect to […]
Castelion Integrating Hypersonics on Saronic’s Marauder ASV
As this week’s buzzworthy drone boat rescue operation showed, Saronic’s autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) have a lot of potential uses. For the company’s biggest and baddest one—the 180-foot Marauder—that includes kitting it out with some serious firepower, courtesy of Castelion. Yesterday, the two companies announced they’re teaming up to integrate Castelion’s Blackbeard low-cost hypersonic weapon […]
House Appropriators Release FY2027 Defense Spending Bill
Unlike in the UK, it’s Christmas in June for the US defense world. Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee released its $1T FY2027 defense spending bill—in line with the Pentagon’s request—and there’s a lot to get excited about for our friends in the startup world (and of course, the primes, too). That eye-watering number doesn’t include […]
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 […]
