Latest Stories
Electra Aerospace and Lockheed Martin Team Up
Once upon a time (last Friday), before the US had struck Iran and sent us all into an X-fuelled tailspin, a pretty interesting announcement came out of the tail-end of the Paris Air Show: Electra.aero (maker of the ultra-short takeoff and landing EL9 aircraft) and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works ($LMT) are teaming up. According to […]
Mach Industries Raises $100M
Young money: Last Wednesday, California-based defense start-up Mach Industries made a hell of an announcement: they raised a $100M Series B led by Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures at a $470M valuation. Impressive stuff, but even more impressive when you consider that the company was founded just two years ago by Ethan Thornton, a now-21-year-old […]
Anduril and Rheinmetall Team Up
Another day, another huge piece of news for European defense tech. This morning, Anduril announced a strategic partnership with German defense prime Rheinmetall to co-produce a suite of autonomous air systems and propulsion capabilities for militaries on the continent. As we said yesterday: Zeitenwende, indeed. Anduril and Rheinmetall’s partnership will center around three capabilities: The […]
Helsing Hits $14B
In a week that has seen some big investments in defense tech (looking at you, Applied Intuition), we’ve got yet another heavy hitter: German AI and drone company Helsing announced Tuesday that they’ve raised $691M in a Series D funding round, valuing it at nearly $14B. Did we mention that it’s only Tuesday?
A Q+A with Pete Newell, CEO of BMNT and Co-founder of Hacking for Defense
Ten years ago, when Pete Newell, Steve Blank, and Joe Felter launched the Hacking for Defense (H4D) course at Stanford, “defense” was still a dirty word in Silicon Valley. Investors were reluctant to put their money into defense tech, engineers were uninterested in the military, and tech companies kept their distance from the DoD. As […]
A Q+A with Anduril’s President and CBO, Matthew Steckman
If you read this newsletter regularly, you’ll know that Anduril has had a hell of a year. In January, the company announced that it’s building a massive, cutting-edge production facility called Arsenal-1, and has since secured major DoD contracts for everything from cUAS, to an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), to rocket motors. And that’s […]
The Godfather of Defense Innovation: A Q+A with Steve Blank
Chances are, if you’re interested in innovation, you’ve heard of Steve Blank. The entrepreneur, educator, and founding member of the Gordian Knot Center at Stanford University is a legend: he has built company after successful company and helped to develop the “Lean Startup” methodology based on his decades in Silicon Valley. If you’ve ever been […]
Q+A with Raj Shah, Managing Partner at Shield Capital
When Raj Shah was tapped to launch the experimental Defense Innovation Unit (DIUx) in 2016, he could barely secure a budget. Raj was a former F-16 pilot and Wharton graduate. He knew that the kind of innovation that drove Silicon Valley could help close the yawning gaps he saw in US capabilities. But the rest […]
