Latest Stories
ICYMI: a16z-backed Galadyne Enters the Missile Game
Missiles are having a moment, and a new startup out of Texas wants in. Earlier this week, missile-making startup Galadyne formally launched with a lofty goal: Founder Chandler Luzsicza and his team want to completely rethink how missiles are made. And, lucky for them, they’ve raised $4.8M in pre-seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Pax Ventures, […]
Machina Labs Raises $124M to Build the Factory of the Future
Are you feeling the reindustrialize vibes yet? Well, you should be, because investors certainly are. Yesterday, advanced manufacturing startup Machina Labs closed a $124M Series C to build its first large-scale “intelligent factory.” The idea is to use AI-powered robots to rethink how everything from car parts to drone and missile airframes are made. The […]
Exclusive: Whitespace Raises $3.2M Seed
We’ve talked a lot around here about how AI is changing the way wars are fought, but we haven’t spent all that much time talking about how it’s going to change the way intelligence is gathered and analyzed. That changes today. This morning, AI-powered intelligence company Whitespace announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that […]
Skyryse Raises $300M Series C
If anyone was hoping that 2026 was going to be a bit chiller in defense tech land than 2025, well, shit luck for you. Yesterday, flight autonomy company Skyryse announced that it’s raised a whopping $300M Series C, bringing its valuation to $1.15B. (Unicorn status, baby!) The round was led by Autopilot Ventures and Fidelity […]
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 […]
