Latest Stories
Exclusive: The Army Turns Petrel’s Group 3 Drone Into an FPV Mothership
The Army, to put it simply, is pretty into its drones these days. They’re so into drones that they’re even testing out big drones that launch small ones. During recent live-fire exercises down at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in Fort Polk, Louisiana, the Army’s 101st Airborne Division turned Petrel Technologies’ Group 3 UAS, […]
BlackSea Scores $256M Navy Contract for SPDS
Turns out that drone boats can do a lot more than just zip about and terrorize Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, y’all. Yesterday, USV company BlackSea Technology announced that it’s been awarded a $256M Navy contract to “build and support the Seabased Petroleum Distribution System (SPDS) program.” For those of you not steeped in specific Navy […]
Exclusive: Firestorm Snags $30M APFIT Contract
You know what they say: When it rains, it pours. And it turns out that holds true whether it’s a thunderstorm or a Firestorm. (Bada-bing!) Fresh off an $82M Series B last week, the 3D-printed drone and mobile manufacturing hotshot announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic this morning that it has secured a $30M […]
Anello Photonics Raises $25M to Scale
Strap in, folks. It’s time to get into the nuts and bolts. On Monday, CA-based silicon photonic optical gyroscope (we’ll get to that) company Anello Photonics announced that it’s raised a cool $25M Series B-2 round led by MESH. New investor Washington Harbour Partners also joined the round, along with existing investors Lockheed Martin Ventures, […]
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 […]
