Latest Stories
Nominal Acquires Fid Labs
When we said the data nerds over at Nominal are on a bit of a heater a few weeks ago, we weren’t kidding. Yesterday, the hardware testing company unveiled its first acquisition after raising $80M at a $1B valuation in March, buying up robotics and engineering agentic AI startup Fid Labs to fully integrate its […]
Air Force Snaps Up Powerus Interceptor Drones
The Pentagon is buying counter-drone technology for “real-world operational use” from a startup, but maybe not from one we’d expect. Yesterday, West Palm Beach, Florida-based drone company Powerus announced a deal with the US Air Force to supply interceptor drones “at scale,” co-founder and president Brett Velicovich told Tectonic. He couldn’t comment on the contract […]
Exclusive Interview: Anduril Unveils a 5G Sentry Tower for Remote Comms
Anduril is getting back to the basics. Everyone’s favorite neo-prime announced today the newest product in their oldest family of systems: a 5G Comms Sentry Tower (CST), built with Nokia and designed to deliver a bubble of connectivity in the most remote locations. If you thought Anduril was all-in on the boomy and zoomy things, […]
Scout AI Raises $100M to Build Robo-Warfare’s Brain
We all know autonomy is all the rage right now, but Scout AI is taking it to the next level. Yesterday, the California-based startup announced a $100M Series A co-led by Align Ventures and Draper Associates to, put simply, build the AI brain for the future of autonomous warfare. For those keeping score at home, […]
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 […]
