Latest Stories
Meet Gardar, Norway’s New €80M Defense Fund
The Nordics are heating up, y’all. This morning, Norwegian VC Sandwater announced the launch of a new €80M ($92M) fund called Gardar, which will “[invest] in Ukrainian defence tech startups from Seed to Series B.” The new fund was set up in conjunction with Ferd AS (a big ol’ family-owned Norwegian investment firm) and Munkene, […]
Allen Control Systems Raises $200M at $2.2B Valuation
The defense tech unicorn club just got its newest member. On Friday, Austin-based counter-drone startup Allen Control Systems announced a $200M Series B led by Smash Capital at a whopping $2.2B post-money valuation—a massive jump from its $170M Series A valuation last year. The drone-downing dollars really do just keep on coming. Ribbit ribbit: A […]
Antares Nuclear Wins the Race to Criticality
When the Department of Energy launched the Reactor Pilot Program last June, it set a July 4, 2026, target for startups to switch on their microreactors and hit criticality—when a nuclear fission chain reaction becomes self-sustaining. Antares, an LA-based space and defense-focused nuclear startup, beat that deadline by a month. Yesterday, the company reached initial […]
Anduril Set to Win ACV cUAS Award
The Marines are on a bit of a spending spree this week, aren’t they? Yesterday, the Marine Corps announced that it intends to issue a sole-source contract to Anduril for non-kinetic counter-drone technology for its Amphibious Combat Vehicles (ACVs), including the company’s Pulsar-L EW platform and vehicle integration kits “to meet an urgent requirement.” According […]
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 […]
