If you can believe it, today marks the halfway point of the year, and we’d be the first to tell you that it’s been a pretty wild ride in defense tech so far. As it turns out, the numbers back up our—and, if you’re reading this newsletter, your—excitement. According to Pitchbook data provided to Tectonic, […]
You know what sucks? When you’ve got a drone on mission with no (or limited) comms and it gets lost with no satellite data to fall back again. Can be a pretty pricey—or at least deeply annoying—issue. Well, good news is, visual navigation startup Vermeer has come up with a solution. This morning, the company […]
Well, jeez. We thought Quantum Systems was already having quite the year—turns out we didn’t know the half of it. This morning, the German autonomy giant announced that it’s raised a $1.2B Series D at a $8B valuation, co-led by Blackstone, Noteus, Airbus, and Advent. The company says it will use the money to “accelerate […]
If you read Tectonic, you’ll probably be aware of two things: Hypersonic weapons are in high demand these days, and the government wants to move fast to field them. Like, really fast. That’s all well and good, but one super-underappreciated part of that story is that testing these systems—especially the unsexy stuff like coatings, ceramic […]
If there is one thing you take away from today’s newsletter, let it be this: Everyone and their mother is still pouring oodles (and then some more oodles) of money into defense. Yesterday, SF-based Cantos Ventures announced it closed a $70M Fund IV earlier this year, which Founder & GP Ian Rountree told Tectonic that […]
If you thought those super-precise 2D satellite images of—for example—bombed-out Iranian nuclear sites were cool, just wait ’til you hear what Vantor has in store for you today. This morning, the satellite imaging company (formerly known as Maxar Intelligence—but you should know that by now) released a new product line it’s calling WorldView 3D that […]
Looks like no one’s found the shut-off valve on the defense tech funding tap yet. Yesterday, San Diego-based early-stage VC firm Harpoon Ventures—an investor in startups ranging from Firestorm to Ursa Major and Merlin—announced that it’s closed a $155M Fund IV to, in the words of Harpoon investor Riley Loftus, back the “maniacs that are […]
Looks like the clankers (robots, for the non-internet people among us) are here to stay. Yesterday, ground autonomy startup Overland AI announced that they’ve been awarded a $20M production contract through the APFIT program to deliver autonomous ground vehicles for the Marine Corps Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS). For the uninitiated, that’s the Corps’ […]
The Canadians are really making some serious money moves in defense, eh? This morning, Canadian defense tech darling Dominion Dynamics announced that it’s raised a CA$139M (US$100M) Series A led by Georgian (Canada’s largest VC). Dominion founder and CEO Eliot Pence told Tectonic that the company will use the money to scale up production of […]
Is it just us, or is the stuff we’re covering (looking at you, haptic controllers) getting more and more niche? This morning, Australian aerospace tech company MAKO (formerly known as MicroTau) announced that it’s raised AU$28M (US$20M) to scale up production of its—wait for it—“drag-reducing shark skin-inspired adhesive film for aviation,” known as Flightfilm. The […]
