Tech

Antares Nuclear Moves Closer to Reaching Criticality

If all goes according to plan, Antares Nuclear and a handful of other nuclear startups will have a lot more to celebrate on July 4 than Independence Day.  Earlier this week, Antares, an LA-based space and defense-focused nuclear fission startup, moved closer to turning on its microreactor after the Department of Energy approved its Preliminary […]

Investment

Grid Aero Raises $20M to Scale its Cargo Drone

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Everyone loves a tiny plane.  On Monday, Grid Aero, a California-based startup building autonomous aircraft focused on logistics operations in contested environments, announced it raised $20M in a Series A co-led by Bison Ventures and Geodesic Capital to boost testing and production of its “pickup truck” […]

Tech

Army Puts Team Lockheed’s NGC2 Prototype to the Test

Turns out teamwork really does make the dream work.  Last week, Lockheed Martin and its teammates showed off the first version of their Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) prototype to the Army’s 25th Infantry Division during the Lightning Surge 1 exercises in Hawaii. Reboot: As a refresher, Lockheed was awarded a $26M OTA in […]

Tech

Exclusive: Picogrid Makes Fast Friends in the Desert

It’s a Picogrid party, and everyone’s invited.  Today, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, integration startup Picogrid announced that the US Army tapped them to make sure a whole bunch of different sensors, radars, C2 systems, and effectors worked together during a recent sensor-to-shooter counter-drone and force-maneuver exercise at the National Training Center in the […]

Tech

Exclusive: Applied Intuition and the Department of Energy Team Up on Golden Dome

Applied Intuition may have cut its teeth in commercial autonomous vehicle software, but the $15B Silicon Valley hotshot is taking the defense world by storm—including on some of the Pentagon’s most ambitious projects.  We’re talking Golden Dome, baby.  Today, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, Applied Intuition announced that they’ve teamed up with the Department […]

Pentagon

Exclusive: Beacon AI Snags Air Force Air Mobility Command Contract

Aviation autonomy is all the rage these days, but Beacon AI is less concerned with automating the piloting part and more focused on all of the brain-draining, paper-pushing stuff pilots and crews have to do before takeoff and in the air. And the Air Force is taking notice.  On Wednesday, in an exclusive release to […]

Investment

Dominion Dynamics Raises $15.2M Seed Round to Build the Arctic Anduril

Everywhere you look in NATO, defense tech startups are popping off, but our friendly neighbors up north have (for the most part) stayed out of the spotlight. Dominion Dynamics wants to change that.  On Monday, the Canadian startup announced it has raised $15.2M ($21M CAD) in seed funding to develop a persistent multi-domain surveillance and […]

PentagonTech

Seasats Snags $24M Navy and Marine Corps Contract

Seasats is making a splash in the unmanned surface vessel (USV) space.  Yesterday, California-based USV startup Seasats announced that it’s been awarded a joint $24M contract with the Navy and Marines under the APFIT program to accelerate production and delivery of its Lightfish USVs. This comes on the heels of the company scoring a $89M […]

PentagonTech

Marine Corps Places $24M Order for 600 Anduril Strike Drones

The Marines have a bunch o’ Bolts heading their way.  On Thursday, defense tech poster child Anduril announced that the US Marine Corps placed a $24M order for 600 of the company’s Bolt-M kamikaze drones under the Organic Precision Fires-Light (OPF-L) program, with deliveries expected between 2026 and 2027. Bolt goes boom: Weighing around 15 […]