Latest Stories
Firestorm Raises $82M to Scale 3D-Printed Drone Microfactories
Firestorm is, well, on fire. The San Diego-based 3D-printed drone startup announced today that it’s raised an $82M Series B led by Washington Harbour Partners to scale production of its xCell containerized drone microfactories, “facilitate execution of contracts, and expand into a number of states around the country,” CEO Dan Magy told Tectonic. Looks like […]
Rune Rolls Out a Military Logistics AI Agent
Forget everything we’ve said about logistics being the unsexy domain of defense. We’re quickly leaving the days of pens, paper, whiteboards, and spreadsheets behind us and putting AI agents in the game. Today, logistics and sustainment software startup Rune rolled out Saga, a frontline AI agent inside its flagship military logistics platform designed for reconstitution, […]
Aevex’s First Week on the Public Markets
As we all know, there’s a whole lot of private capital going into defense these days, but, as it turns out, there’s a big appetite in the public markets, too. California-based drone-maker Aevex ($AVEX) went public on the NYSE on April 17th, valuing the company at $2.57B after shares jumped 15 percent in their debut […]
Exclusive: Skyfire AI Closes $11M Seed Round
There’s a lot of hype around both building drones and, if you’ve been keeping up with Tectonic, making them super autonomous, but SkyfireAI is more focused on building the software around existing drones to make them easier for pilots to use. That’s been a popular selling point with a lot of public safety agencies, and […]
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 […]
