Well, the defense tech money hose isn’t looking like it’s slowing down anytime soon. On Wednesday, ground autonomy company Forterra announced a massive $238M Series C that launched its valuation over the $1B mark. The funding round—which included $50M in debt financing—was led by Moore Strategic Ventures with participation from RTX Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Hanwha […]
Last week, we said Neros was turning things up a notch. We might’ve jumped the gun—now they’re really turning it up. Earlier this week, the white-hot drone startup announced it closed $75M Series B. As a cherry on top, they were tapped for the US Army’s Purpose Built Attritable System (PBAS) program. Not a bad […]
Whoever thought the defense tech investment hype cycle was coming to an end, think again. Late last week, California-based VC fund MVP Ventures announced that it’s raised a $125M Fund II, nearly quadrupling its $35M Fund I. MVP Managing Partner Weston Moyer told Tectonic that about 12-15 percent of that will go to defense tech—six […]
Remember that Firehawk winning streak we covered last month? Well, turns out the energetics startup wasn’t quite finished. Yesterday, the company announced—just two months after closing a $60M funding—that it’s received an additional “eight-figure” strategic investment from Hanwha Defense USA, according to a company spokesperson. Firehawk CEO Will Edwards told Tectonic that the partnership will […]
The DoD, sorry, DoW, has really gotten a taste for critical minerals. On Monday, rare-earth magnet maker Vulcan Elements announced a whopping $1.4B partnership with the Pentagon, Department of Commerce, and ReElement Technologies to scale their vertically integrated rare-earth magnet supply chain. Sounds like the meeting with Xi wasn’t that good. Rare air: Drones have […]
We talk a whole lot about the hardware and software that enable warfighting in this newsletter, but there is a whole other corner of defense that we haven’t shed a lot of light on: biosecurity. But perhaps it’s time we paid this sci-fi-scary corner of the defense tech world a little bit more attention. On […]
If you’re going to make friends as an autonomy company, it’s probably pretty helpful if one of those friends is one of the most powerful and valuable chip companies in the world. Yesterday, maritime autonomy darling Saronic announced that it’s officially inked a “strategic collaboration” with the chipmaking giant NVIDIA (which has a $4.43T market […]
The expansion of the Anduril empire continues. Earlier this week, mere days after unveiling their futuristic EagleEye headset at AUSA, the defense tech giant announced that they’ve acquired a US-based infrared company called American Infrared Solutions (AIRS). According to a release by Anduril on Monday, the acquisition “will further integrate AIRS’s advanced hardware into Anduril’s […]
Manufacturing is so back, baby. This morning, “supply chain orchestration” platform Silkline announced in an exclusive interview with Tectonic that they’ve raised a $4M seed round led by Origin Ventures with participation from Forward Deployed VC, 25madison, MatchstickVentures, Barrel Ventures, and Plow Ventures. The company—founded a little over two years ago—uses AI to make “sourcing […]
Remember when we said the Ukrainians were coming? Well, it’s beginning to look like we were right. This morning, Ukraine-focused US VC UA1 announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’re raising a $50M fund to scale Ukrainian tech “into capabilities that strengthen U.S., European, and NATO security.” The firm—co-founded by US Marine Corps […]
