DIU is wasting no time getting to work under its new leadership. Last night, the innovation unit posted a new $100M (yes, $100M) prize challenge to “prototype market-ready solutions to establish a robust, scalable and vehicle-agnostic capability for understanding, tasking and coordinating autonomous systems at the fleet level.” Using normal words: They’re looking for a […]
Looks like the factory of the future craze ain’t going anywhere in 2026. Over the weekend, new-age manufacturing company Hadrian said it had raised an undisclosed amount of capital at a $1.6B valuation led by T. Rowe Price, with participation from Altimeter Capital, D1 Capital Partners, StepStone Group, 1789 Capital, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, a16z, […]
Well, it’s certainly been a busy start to the week for the Pentagon press office. Yesterday, between a rabble-rousing speech by Pete Hegseth at Lockheed’s factory in Fort Worth, the release of a plan to fully overhaul the DoD’s innovation ecosystem, another plan to accelerate AI development for the military, and the official announcement of […]
Looks like the Europeans got the memo on the whole “prime-startup” partnership thing—and man, oh man, they’re not effing around. This morning, French autonomy startup Harmattan AI announced that it’s scored a $200M Series B at a $1.4B valuation led by French defense giant Dassault Aviation. Harmattan CEO Mouad M’Ghari told Tectonic that the two […]
If 2025 was the year of the BFB (big f*cking boat), it looks like 2026 might end up being the year of the EBFB (even bigger f*cking boat). Yesterday, autonomous surface vessel (ASV) company HavocAI announced that it’s teaming up with Hanwha Defense USA (the US subsidiary of the Korean defense giant) to build a […]
If there is one piece of advice that everyone seems to bandy about in the defense tech world, it’s “go fast.” And it seems at least one company has taken that seriously to heart. This morning, just a few months after emerging from stealth, new-age defense tech holding company Valinor announced that it’s raised a […]
It certainly seems like our friends in Rhode Island had some pretty ambitious New Year’s resolutions. This morning, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) company Vatn Systems announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it has acquired RI-based Crewless Marine to scale up its underwater acoustic sensing and processing capabilities. Crewless will be fully folded into […]
Well, if anyone thought 2026 was going to be a chill year, everyone and their mother is out to prove you wrong. Yesterday, European drone giant Destinus announced that it’s finalized its acquisition of Swiss AI avionics company Daedalean for a cool CHF 180M ($225M). Destinus said in a statement that Daedalean (say that five […]
We love a cheeky raise to kick off the new year. This morning, space-based radar company Array Labs announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it’s raised a $20M Series A led by Catapult Ventures, with participation from Washington Harbour Partners, Kompas VC, and others, including Y Combinator. The startup—which builds powerful, more affordable […]
Well, the Pentagon is certainly pushing up against the Christmas deadline. Yesterday, the DoD, sorry, DoW, announced over $400M in APFIT contracts using FY26 funds—the first of the year—bringing total contracts awarded by the nearly four-year-old program to over $1.4B. While the DoD didn’t release names of the companies in this batch of projects—as per—a […]
