Investment

Reliable Robotics Raises $160M 

Welp, the cash money just keeps on flowing.  Yesterday, aviation autonomy company Reliable Robotics announced that it’s raised a cool, cool $160M to “accelerate deployment and scale production of the Reliable Autonomy System (RAS).” That’s their flight autonomy stack that basically takes any plane and makes it a drone. The round was led by Nimble […]

Tech

Kraken and Anduril Team Up

Our drone boat friends over in Fareham are certainly having quite the week. Yesterday, everyone’s favorite new age defense company (Anduril) announced that it’s teaming up with UK-founded Kraken Technology Group to bring the company’s “proven family of small, high-performance, mass-producible USVs” to the US. The announcement comes just a day after Rheinmetall—that tiny German […]

Pentagon

Shield AI Tapped for COCO ISR

Our friends over at Shield AI are having quite the start to the year.  Yesterday, the San Diego-based autonomy giant announced that it’s been tapped by the US Navy to compete for $800M in ISR services with its VTOL V-BAT drone. AV—FKA AeroVironment—also announced that it had been selected to compete for the contractor-owned, contractor-operated […]

Tech

Saildrone Unveils Spectre, Built with Lockheed Martin

By the look of things, it’s going to be a busy, busy week out in National Harbor.  This morning, USV darling Saildrone announced at Sea-Air-Space that they’re building a new, 52-meter (170-foot) USV called Spectre, the “largest, fastest, and most capable Saildrone platform to date,” according to the company. The big ol’ drone boat is […]

Tech

Exclusive: Tocaro Blue Unveils ApolloCore

It’s Sea Air Space week, baby, and the news is already coming in hot and fast. This morning, maritime perception company Tocaro Blue (you’ll remember them from their team-up with Havoc AI) unveiled ApolloCore, a new camera-based machine learning software, in an exclusive release to Tectonic. The stack—designed to work with the company’s ProteusCore radar […]

Investment

Ulysses Raises $46M Seed + Series A

Strap on your life jackets, kids. We’re headed out to sea.  Yesterday, “ocean company” (we’ll explain) Ulysses announced that it’s raised a $38M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz’s (a16z) American Dynamism fund, with participation from Booz Allen Ventures and Harpoon Ventures, bringing total funding to $46M (with an earlier, unannounced $8M seed). The startup—which […]

Investment

Lockheed Martin Ventures Boosts Fund to $1B

Turns out an old dog can, in fact, learn new tricks.  Yesterday, mom-and-pop shop Lockheed Martin announced that it’s boosting its venture fund (aptly named Lockheed Martin Ventures) from $400M to a cool $1B, marking “the largest boost in investment since the fund was established in 2007.” The prime says it will use the funds […]

Pentagon

Exclusive: Striveworks Scores $70M Pentagon-wide EA

Well, it looks like the Pentagon might finally be well and truly getting on the AI bandwagon. This morning, AI-for-defense startup Striveworks announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’ve scored a $70M multi-year enterprise agreement (EA) with the DoD (through the US Army) to deploy their flagship Chariot Core software across the Department.  […]

Europe

Exclusive: Sapient Perception Scores €2M, Ukrainian Deployment

Well, the Nordics are making some money moves, aren’t they? This morning, Danish sensor startup Sapient Perception announced in an exclusive interview with Tectonic that they’ve raised a €2M ($2.4M) pre-seed round co-led by Balnord and FORWARD.one.  The company says it will use the money to “accelerate development of the company’s software-defined cameras and AI […]

PentagonTech

Exclusive: Redwire Scores $20M Follow-on from USMC

It’s a rare week when we write about more contracts than we do investments, but here we are.  This morning, space and defense giant Redwire ($RDW) announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it’s been awarded $20M in follow-on orders from the Navy and Marine Corps Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program Office (PMA-263) […]