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 […]
The money moves just keep on coming. Last week, Business Insider reported that national security VC America’s Frontier Fund—of Venus Aerospace and Foundation Alloy fame—is raising $315M for its deep-tech focused Frontier Fund. According to a fund insider Tectonic spoke to on condition of anonymity (those pesky SEC regulations), the raise will officially close in […]
Turns out the European defense tech companies are making money moves, too. This morning, “next-generation defense prime” Harmattan AI announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’ve secured a more than $10M (double-digit millions) contract from a “large NATO country” to deliver AI-enabled small drones. Though Harmattan was scant with details on the contract, […]
Ah, to be a fly on the wall of the NATO summit. In case you missed it, alliance leaders met this week in the Hague and, well, they had a lot to talk about. Some highlights included: Trump flying in pretty pissed at Iran and Israel, Rutte sending Trump a wall of complimentary text (and […]
If we’ve learned anything from the budget and reconciliation drama of the past few weeks, it’s that the way money moves around Washington is, like, extraordinarily complicated. Between the congressional infighting, creative allocation maneuvers (looking at you, BBB), and the missing details, things can get confusing real quick. Well, the good news is, looks like […]
