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InvestmentTech

Traysar Emerges to Take Warfare Underground

Last year, Palmer Luckey said that he believes “the subterranean domain”—rather than sea, air, or space—“will be the defining [warfighting] space, but nobody agrees with me, and every time I talk about it I sound insane to people.” He also said that “a vehicle that moves through the crust of the earth is going to […]

Europe

Quantum Systems Makes Serious Land Domain Moves

If you were paying attention to the news coming out of Eurosatory last week, one thing was extremely clear: Everyone (and we mean everyone) is making moves to go cross-domain. And that’s especially true for German defense darling Quantum Systems. Last week, the company made two announcements that solidify its status as very much not […]

Tech

Exclusive: Ondas Unveils a New Fully Autonomous Interceptor

Ondas had quite the week at Eurosatory.  At the defense expo in Paris, the US-based autonomous systems roll-up company unveiled a slew of new tech under its “Autonomy at First Contact” vision, including a ground robot, an autonomous defense orchestration system, and a couple of new counter-drone systems.  In that broader announcement, Ondas hinted that […]

Pentagon

Air Force Awards Production Contracts for CCA

Well, sounds like those loyal wingman dreams are becoming a reality. Yesterday, the Air Force announced that they’ve awarded production contracts to Anduril and General Atomics for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, a whole four months ahead of schedule. The contracts (amount undisclosed) will cover “Increment 1 air vehicles as well as mission autonomy software, […]

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Q + A

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

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 […]

Q + A

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 […]

Q + A

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 […]