Investment

Valar Atomics Raises $1B Series B Led by Sequoia 

The nuclear startup world is going, well, nuclear.  Yesterday, El Segundo-based Valar Atomics announced a whopping $1B Series B led by Sequoia Capital. The raise comes hot on the heels of the three-year-old startup’s microreactor hitting criticality (when a nuclear chain reaction becomes self-sustaining) in the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program, a partnership with […]

PentagonTech

Army Taps Rheinmetall-led Team for Sustainment UGVs

Looks like the Army’s keeping its foot on the gas in its push for more ground autonomy. On Friday, American Rheinmetall announced that it’s snagged a contract to serve as the prime integrator for a team of companies—Harbinger, Forterra, and Primordial Labs—that will develop autonomous logistics ground vehicles for the Army’s Project Sustainment initiative. Ghost […]

Investment

Leonardo Buys Raft in $450M Deal

Watch out, y’all. The Europeans are coming for your defense tech startups.  Leonardo DRS, the US subsidiary of Italian defense giant Leonardo, announced yesterday that it’s snapped up Virginia-based data fusion and AI defense software company Raft in an all-cash deal valued at $450M. The deal, according to Leonardo DRS CEO John Baylouny, “adds proven […]

Tech

Applied Intuition Turns AV’s Mayhem 10 Drone into a Swarm

It seems like anywhere autonomy is involved, Applied Intuition finds a way to wiggle in. This time, it’s with defense tech heavyweight AV (FKA AeroVironment).  The $15B autonomy software startup announced this morning that it’s teaming up with AV to integrate its Acuity ISR/Strike swarming software into the latter’s Mayhem 10 “launched effects” (fancy term […]

Pentagon

Pentagon Inks Patriot and THAAD Component Deal with L3Harris

The Pentagon’s framework agreements with Lockheed to triple and quadruple Patriot and THAAD production (respectively) made a big splash, but it looks like the department heard that those numbers would be pretty hard to hit if production of their key components didn’t get some love, too.  Luckily, they’re moving to fix that missile pickle. Yesterday, […]