Tech

Shift5 Joins Anduril’s NGC2 Team

Anduril sure has a knack for making friends. Yesterday, defense and transportation-focused startup Shift5 announced that they’re joining Anduril’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) prototyping effort to bring its predictive maintenance magic to the Army’s 4th Infantry Division’s vehicles.  Race to integrate: We’ve covered the Army’s NGC2 program a lot, so we’ll keep it […]

Tech

Exclusive: Energetics Startup CMG Emerges from Stealth to Bring More Boom

Defense tech isn’t all drone swarms and software. Sometimes the basic stuff is the most important. Today, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, Texas-based energetic material startup Critical Materials Group (CMG) emerged from stealth to solve an old problem with new tech: Making more of the stuff that makes things go boom, starting with C-4, […]

EuropeTech

Quantum Systems Unveils New UGV

Quantum Systems is officially entering the ground autonomy game, baby.  Earlier today, German autonomy hotshot Quantum Systems introduced MANDRILL, its first unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), at the Enforce Tac trade show in Nuremberg. The $3.5B startup, better known for its aerial drones, called it the first in a line of UGVs designed to work with […]

Tech

Meet Project Millennium, Neros’ 250,000-Square-Foot Drone Factory

Looks like someone wants to unleash drone dominance.  Yesterday, the FPV phenoms from El Segundo turned things up a notch big-time with Project Millennium: A new 250,000-square-foot factory down the road in Torrance, CA, where they’ll ramp up production of their Archer drones to a million a year.  If you were wondering what they were […]

Tech

Vantor Integrates With Google’s Earth AI Model

Vantor’s satellite imagery just got a whole lot smarter with some help from their friends at a little startup called Google. Yesterday, Vantor (the artist formerly known as Maxar Intelligence) announced a deal with Google to run Google’s Earth AI imagery models on Vantor’s government-focused, spatial intelligence platform, allowing Google’s AI to automate analysis reports […]

Investment

Aussie Autonomy Startup Breaker Raises $6M Seed Round

In case you missed 8VC and Lux Capital throwing their weight behind Nigeria’s Terra Industries this week, the big ballers of American defense tech VC have been casting their eyes abroad lately. And now, they’re looking at the land down under.   Earlier this week, Breaker—an Australian-American startup building AI voice-control software for autonomous swarms—raised $6M […]

Investment

Seasats Aims to Boost USV Production after $20M Series A 

Laissez les bons temps rouler in maritime autonomy world.  Yesterday, California-based USV startup Seasats announced that it closed a $20M Series A led by Konvoy Ventures, with participation from Shield Capital, Techstars, and others. That fresh capital brings their total funding to over $40M, and as CEO Mike Flanigan told Tectonic, it’s all about scaling […]

PentagonTech

ICYMI: Saronic Tapped for DARPA Pulling Guard Program

Look away, pirates: The Pentagon’s research agency is on a mission to make it a little bit harder to mess with unarmed vessels, and they’re betting that maritime autonomy hotshot Saronic can help them get there.  Last week, DARPA tapped Saronic and three others to design and develop a semi-autonomous escort vessel under the Pulling […]

Tech

ICYMI: Autonomy Testing for CCA Begins

Well, the US certainly didn’t slow things down while we were all eating pretzels in Munich.  In case you missed it: On Thursday, the US Air Force announced that it’s kicked off integrating and testing the mission autonomy packages for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. That’s the software brains, basically, that will make those […]

Investment

Nigeria’s Terra Industries Raises an Additional $22M

Watch out, because Terra is taking off.   Yesterday, a few short weeks after raising $11.75M in a seed round led by 8VC, Nigerian autonomous systems startup Terra Industries announced they’ve tacked on another $22M in a strategic bridge round led by Lux Capital. That latest haul brings the company’s total seed funding to $34M at […]