It’s been a big week for Stark. Last Wednesday, the German drone company announced that it’s opening a 40,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in the UK, the company’s first site outside of Germany and Ukraine. Plus, the company announced that it’s acquiring Berlin-based autonomous flight control start-up Pleno, which specializes in comms-denied navigation for low-cost […]
Well, turns out Firestorm Labs is printing a lot more than drones. On Wednesday, the San Diego-based manufacturing and drone company announced it has raised a $47M Series A led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, Decisive Point, Washington Harbour Partners, Booz Allen Ventures, and others. The company says it […]
Looks like Blue Water Autonomy is doubling down. This morning, the Boston-based autonomous shipbuilding company told Tectonic in an exclusive release that they’re opening a DC office and hiring three new engineers to amp up their development and testing process with the Navy. This comes just two months after the company emerged from stealth with […]
If you’ve learned one thing from this newsletter, we hope it’s that new tech is changing the way wars are fought. Drones, directed energy weapons, massive sensor suites—they’ve changed the shape of the battlefield. But the thing is, they also require a heck of a lot of power. Power isn’t always easy to come by […]
The maritime mash-ups continue. Yesterday, 8VC-backed unmanned surface vessel (USV) company Saronic announced that they’re teaming up with Vigor Marine Group, a maritime services provider that specializes in marine fabrication, vessel repair, and maintenance. According to a release by Saronic, the two companies will form a strategic partnership and “work closely to identify opportunities to […]
Lest you forgot amidst the chaos of, well, everything, there is still a war waging in Ukraine. In July alone, Russia has launched its largest drone attacks so far on the country, allegedly assassinated a high-level intelligence officer, and killed at least 232 civilians, making this the deadliest month of the war in about three […]
Well, it seems the Pentagon is taking the matter of rare earths into its own hands. Yesterday, the DoD announced it’s buying $400M of convertible preferred shares in Las Vegas-based rare earths mining company MP Materials, making it the company’s largest stakeholder with a 15% stake. The DoD will also issue MP a $150M loan […]
Turns out the defense companies are teaming up across the pond, too. Yesterday, Germany-based autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) company ARX Robotics announced it’s forming a “software-defined defense mobility” partnership with German propulsion and drivetrain prime RENK Group. According to the two companies, the team-up will allow them to rapidly scale up production of UGVs […]
Have you ever thought, hey, wouldn’t it be great if special ops could use ChatGPT for everything like the rest of us? Well, now they can—sort of. Yesterday, US Special Operations Command announced that they’ve adopted an enterprise-wide generative AI platform called SOFchat, built by a company called Legion Intelligence. The initial contract with Legion […]
Looks like the primes still have something going for them after all. This morning, unmanned surface vessel (USV) company HavocAI announced that it’s teaming up with Lockheed Martin to beef up its medium USV fleet. HavocAI CEO Paul Lwin told Tectonic that the most critical part of the partnership will be integrating Lockheed’s advanced sensors […]
