Big day for all the sustainment nerds out there. Yesterday, military logistics startup Rune Technologies announced they’ve raised a $24M Series A led by Human Capital, with participation from Pax VC and Washington Harbour Partners. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Point72 Ventures, XYZ Venture Capital, and Forward Deployed VC also returned to the table. The raise […]
At a time when all of the big money movers are getting into defense tech, it’s only right for the OG to double down. On Monday, Booz Allen Hamilton, the century-old defense and intelligence consulting giant, announced a $200M boost to its venture arm, raising its total capital commitment to $300M. Rise of the primes: […]
When defense tech is hot, it’s hot. This morning, dual-use defense- and security-focused VC fund New North Ventures announced exclusively to Tectonic the first close of its second fund. It’s raised $45M in anchor funding (with a target of $80M and room to grow to $100M) through the DoD and SBA’s Small Business Investment Company […]
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 […]
Less than a month after raising $125M and hitting unicorn status, Gecko Robotics has notched another win—or two. On Tuesday, the Pittsburgh-based AI and robotics company announced a partnership with BPMI, the prime for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program (NNPP), to take its wall-crawling robots into the shipyard. As if that wasn’t enough, they followed […]
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 […]
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 […]
Like kids on Christmas morning, the defense tech world waits up each year for Silicon Valley Defense Group’s NatSec100 report—the nonprofit’s annual ranking and analysis of the top 100 venture-backed, dual-use and defense tech companies shaping US national security innovation. This week, the report finally dropped. Seeing green: The long and short of it is […]
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 […]
