Less than a year after dropping a cool $4.1B to acquire BlueHalo, AV—the artist formerly known as AeroVironment—is back with another acquisition. Earlier this week, the company snapped up California-based drone manufacturing and design firm ESAero for $200M. Under the deal, ESAero will function as a subsidiary of AV under its Loitering Munition Systems business […]
Well, Nominal is certainly having quite the past few weeks. This morning—on the heels of an $80M raise led by Founder’s Fund and an official partnership with Anduril—the Austin-based testing startup announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’re officially teaming up with ground autonomy hotshot Forterra. Nominal CEO Cameron McCord told Tectonic that […]
We keep saying maritime autonomy is all the rage, but multi-domain autonomy is really where it’s at. This morning, Rhode Island-based unmanned surface vehicle (USV) startup HavocAI announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it has acquired not one but two companies—heavy-lift drone-maker Mavrik and industrial vehicle autonomy startup Teleo—to take its autonomy software […]
After a quiet few years, it looks like our friendly neighbors up north are diving headfirst into defense tech. Hot off a $15.2M ($21M CAD) seed round in January, Canadian defense tech startup Dominion Dynamics kicked things up a notch late last week, announcing plans to invest $37M ($50M CAD) to kickstart development of Scout, […]
The state of the UNION is growing. (Bada-bing!!) Yesterday, Texas-based software-defined factory startup UNION announced a partnership with Hanwha Defense USA, the US arm of the South Korean mega-prime, to speed up production of 155mm shells. Hegseth may be saying the US has plenty of munitions—but sounds like UNION’s betting we’ll want even more. Rippin’ […]
If you thought we were done with the partnership news, well, think again. The mash-ups continue, baby. This morning, robotics startup Crow Industries and Parry Labs announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’re teaming up to build Parry’s edge compute and autonomy stack onto Crow’s Fenris UGV. “We were both finalists in the […]
Things are speeding up on the supersonic front, and fast. High-speed aircraft company Hermeus announced this week that it has successfully completed a flight test of its unmanned Quarterhorse Mk 2.1, which it calls the “world’s first high-Mach remotely piloted aircraft,” less than a year after the first iteration took flight. Everyone loves a spicy […]
Another day, another pretty lethal-sounding mash-up. Earlier this week, AI-powered machine gun turret startup Allen Control Systems announced that it’s officially teaming up with drone giant Red Cat as part of their Futures Initiative to build their Bullfrog platform onto Red Cat’s unmanned surface vessels (USVs). Who said you can’t teach an old frog new […]
Look out, world. The El Segundo bros are teaming up. This morning, CX2 and Neros announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’re teaming up to put CX2’s c-UAS tech onto Neros’ made-in-the-USA quadcopter drones. Specifically, the two companies will build Vadris—CX2’s RF-seeking drone pilot locator—onto Neros’ Archer FPV drone. The idea is to […]
Big week for propulsion around here. This morning, solid rocket motor startup X-Bow Systems announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’ve successfully tested their 34.5-inch Ballesta SRM, first unveiled in 2022. The big-boy motor—which has more thrust and can get up to super-fast speeds more quickly—is best suited for launch for big ol’ […]
