Big week for the nuts and bolts side of defense. Yesterday, Sift—an El Segundo-based startup building the data infrastructure layer for autonomous machines—announced that it’s raised a $42M Series B led by StepStone with participation from GV (Google Ventures), Riot Ventures, Fika Ventures, and CIV. The company says it’ll use the new cash money to […]
If anyone thought the collective spending spree on defense tech was coming to an end any time soon, think again. Yesterday, Texas-based VC Overmatch Ventures announced that it’s raised a cool $250M second fund, less than 2 years after raising a debut $70M fund in 2024. Jordan Blashek—GP at Overmatch—told Tectonic that this new pile […]
With all eyes on an autonomous future of flight, it’s easy to forget the human pilots who will remain firmly in the cockpit for the foreseeable future. Luckily, one San Francisco-based company is remaining focused on people, even as we await the rise of the robots. Yesterday, Navi AI—a startup using AI to improve pilot […]
For this morning’s exercise, we want you to take everything you’ve ever known about the way a drone looks or acts and throw it out the window. This morning, contested logistics startup Enigma emerged from stealth with a $5M Air Force contract and about $2M in VC funding in an exclusive release to Tectonic. The […]
Okay, so when you open Tectonic, you might not expect to be reading about a mobile carrier, but hear us out. Yesterday, “privacy-first” carrier Cape raised a chill $100M led by Bain Capital Ventures and IVP, with participation from new investors including 01 Advisors, 137 Ventures, Definition, and Fifth Down Capital. And here’s why we […]
If you thought the Crow Industries and Parry Labs mash-up was the only collab to come out of the Army’s xTech Overwatch competition, think again. This morning, GPS-free navigation company TERN and AI-powered simulation and planning company Sandtable announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’re teaming up after the exercise to plug Sandtable’s […]
Another day, another IPO. Defense tech is entering the big leagues, baby. Yesterday, flight autonomy hotshot Merlin officially started trading on the Nasdaq as $MRLN after merging with a SPAC called Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. IV and raising about $200M in proceeds. The deal valued Merlin at $800M pre-money. In normal people speak? Merlin just […]
Well, god damn. When we said the Ukrainians were coming, we didn’t necessarily think it would be directly to the US stock market, but here we are. This morning, Ukrainian UAV software company Swarmer officially IPO’d on the NASDAQ as $SWMR. The company—which builds the software brain that allows drones to operate as a swarm—is […]
Y’all ever have those moments where you read a story, scroll past, do a double-take, and then scroll back like, “F**ck me.” Yeah, this is one of those. On Friday, the US Army announced (in a fairly chill contract roundup) that it’s issued a 10-year contract worth up to $20B—yes, billion with a B—to “consolidate […]
Big day for the unsexy side of defense. On Thursday, military logistics startup Rune Technologies announced that they’ve scored a $2M Direct to Phase II SBIR contract with the US Army in support of the service’s PORTAL (Predict, Optimize, Recommend, and Track for Adaptive Logistics) program. The company says that over the next 18 months, […]
