Remember when Meta was very, very careful to distance itself from defense? Oh, and also when Anduril founder Palmer Luckey was ousted from the company (then called Facebook) in 2017? Well, times they have a-changed. Late last week, Anduril and Meta announced a strategic partnership to build extended reality (XR) products for the US military. […]
Ten years ago, when Pete Newell, Steve Blank, and Joe Felter launched the Hacking for Defense (H4D) course at Stanford, “defense” was still a dirty word in Silicon Valley. Investors were reluctant to put their money into defense tech, engineers were uninterested in the military, and tech companies kept their distance from the DoD. As […]
We told you that things were speeding up. Late last week, energetics company Firehawk Aerospace announced that they’ve secured a $4.9M contract with the US Air Force to help accelerate the development of next-gen hybrid rocket engines for strategic and tactical missiles. Firehawk CEO Will Edwards told Tectonic that the company will work with AFRL […]
Things are speeding up, and quick. High-speed aircraft company Hermeus announced on Tuesday that it’s completed the long-awaited flight test of its Quarterhorse Mk 1 at Edwards Air Force Base in California, marking a “significant step in Hermeus’ development of high-Mach and hypersonic aircraft,” according to the company. Hermeus aims to use super-quick, iterative development […]
We told you everyone was making the great leap across the pond. Yesterday, vehicle autonomy software company Applied Intuition announced that it’s officially launching in the UK. The company—which just last week announced two new defense autonomy products—plans to invest £50M ($67M) in the country and open a research and development office in central London. […]
Drone boat company Saronic is officially making the great, trans-Atlantic leap. This week, the 8VC-backed company—known for its ever-growing family of unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and fat, fat valuation—announced that it’s officially opening an office in the UK and expanding operations in Australia. London calling, indeed. AUKUS-tastic: Saronic says it’s making the move as part […]
Way, way back in February (we were so young, so innocent), we wrote about autonomous vehicle software company Applied Intuition acquiring EpiSci, which builds autonomy software for everything from drones, to planes, to boats. Well, it seems the first fruits of the acquisition have been born. On Tuesday, the company unveiled two hot new defense […]
As we’ve said a few times in the last couple of weeks, it’s always good to remember that cutting-edge defense tech is way, way more than drones and hypersonic missiles (though those things are super-cool and super-important too). AI is transforming more than just weapons systems—it’s also changing the way that the US gathers, analyzes, […]
In case you missed it, President Trump took a grand ol’ whistle-stop tour through the Middle East last week, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, and securing—per his team—over $2T in deals (though the numbers are a little fuzzy). You may have overlooked it amidst the hair-flipping, camel-and-horse-parading, and mobile-McDonald’s-making, but a few of […]
Remember when we said that some of the most cutting-edge defense tech isn’t necessarily the flying, sexy stuff? Well, we’re back to prove our point. This morning, military operations software company Adyton announced to Tectonic in an exclusive release that they’ve received $11M in funding led by Venrock, with participation from Khosla Ventures, Liquid 2 […]
