Investment

Reliable Robotics Raises $160M 

Welp, the cash money just keeps on flowing.  Yesterday, aviation autonomy company Reliable Robotics announced that it’s raised a cool, cool $160M to “accelerate deployment and scale production of the Reliable Autonomy System (RAS).” That’s their flight autonomy stack that basically takes any plane and makes it a drone. The round was led by Nimble […]

PentagonTech

Exclusive: The Marines Snap Up Valinor’s Hospital-in-a-Box 

Valinor launched last year with a focus on building the unsexy but critically important tech for modern conflict, and that pitch is starting to pay off. This morning, the new-age defense tech holding company announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it secured a Marine Corps contract for Harbor, its modern, mobile, and software-centric […]

Tech

Kraken and Anduril Team Up

Our drone boat friends over in Fareham are certainly having quite the week. Yesterday, everyone’s favorite new age defense company (Anduril) announced that it’s teaming up with UK-founded Kraken Technology Group to bring the company’s “proven family of small, high-performance, mass-producible USVs” to the US. The announcement comes just a day after Rheinmetall—that tiny German […]

Pentagon

Shield AI Tapped for COCO ISR

Our friends over at Shield AI are having quite the start to the year.  Yesterday, the San Diego-based autonomy giant announced that it’s been tapped by the US Navy to compete for $800M in ISR services with its VTOL V-BAT drone. AV—FKA AeroVironment—also announced that it had been selected to compete for the contractor-owned, contractor-operated […]

Tech

Exclusive: KBR Taps Tagup’s Logistics AI Platform 

Tag, you’re it! In an exclusive release in Tectonic this morning, big-time prime KBR announced that it’s tapped Tagup’s AI-powered defense logistics software to bring some startup spice to its “global logistics mission sets,” starting off with ground equipment maintenance and logistics planning operations.  In 2026, the unsexy side of defense is turning out to […]

Tech

Saildrone Unveils Spectre, Built with Lockheed Martin

By the look of things, it’s going to be a busy, busy week out in National Harbor.  This morning, USV darling Saildrone announced at Sea-Air-Space that they’re building a new, 52-meter (170-foot) USV called Spectre, the “largest, fastest, and most capable Saildrone platform to date,” according to the company. The big ol’ drone boat is […]

Tech

Exclusive: Tocaro Blue Unveils ApolloCore

It’s Sea Air Space week, baby, and the news is already coming in hot and fast. This morning, maritime perception company Tocaro Blue (you’ll remember them from their team-up with Havoc AI) unveiled ApolloCore, a new camera-based machine learning software, in an exclusive release to Tectonic. The stack—designed to work with the company’s ProteusCore radar […]

Pentagon

Beacon AI Snags $50M USSOCOM Aviation AI Contract

After a long line of (relatively) smaller contracts, Beacon’s finally getting the big bucks. Last week, California-based aviation AI startup inked a $50M multi-year deal—their 13th, and largest, to date—with US Special Operations Command that’ll put its pilot-assistance software in the cockpits of a wide range of SOCOM’s aircraft. Under the contract—a four-year Prototype Other […]

Tech

Exclusive: Terra Industries Opens Africa’s Largest Drone Factory in Ghana

Africa might not come to mind as a defense tech hotspot, but Terra Industries is changing that—quickly.  In an exclusive announcement to Tectonic this morning, 8VC and Lux Capital-backed Nigerian drone startup Terra Industries unveiled its new 34,000-square-foot factory in Accra, Ghana, called Pax-2. The facility will be the company’s first outside Nigeria and, with […]

Investment

Ulysses Raises $46M Seed + Series A

Strap on your life jackets, kids. We’re headed out to sea.  Yesterday, “ocean company” (we’ll explain) Ulysses announced that it’s raised a $38M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz’s (a16z) American Dynamism fund, with participation from Booz Allen Ventures and Harpoon Ventures, bringing total funding to $46M (with an earlier, unannounced $8M seed). The startup—which […]