Last month, the FAA quietly announced that it, together with the Pentagon’s JIATF-401 counter-drone task force, carried out “a thorough safety assessment of a high-energy laser counter-drone system.” Well, the cat’s out of the bag. This morning, AV ($AVAV) exclusively revealed to Tectonic that their LOCUST laser was the mystery counter-drone system tested by federal regulators and […]
If you’ve been keeping up with, ya know, everything going on, drones are kind of a big deal right now. The problem is that the one-way attack drones the Pentagon is rushing to get its hands on often rely on high-end MANET and mesh radios—made by Silvus, Persistent Systems, TrellisWare, and other big players—for communications […]
Everyone really is making that great, grand leap across the pond. This morning, Croatian drone giant Orqa FPV announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it’s spinning out an independent US entity called Orqa US, focused on building end-to-end UAV systems for Drone Dominance. The US company is teaming up with defense contractor By […]
Well, New Mexico is turning out to be the land of enchantment—at least for a few lucky deep tech firms. This morning, a new NM–based company, Tierra Adentro Growth (TAG) Capital (say that five times fast, nerds), announced in an exclusive interview with Tectonic that it has raised a $100M deep tech infrastructure fund focused […]
If anyone thought the collective spending spree on defense tech was coming to an end any time soon, think again. Over the weekend, Bloomberg reported that Founders Fund—the 21-year-old VC firm co-founded by Peter Thiel—raised its fourth and largest fund to date: A $6B fund dedicated to later-stage companies, including another big bet on Anduril, […]
When we said the data nerds over at Nominal are on a bit of a heater a few weeks ago, we weren’t kidding. Yesterday, the hardware testing company unveiled its first acquisition after raising $80M at a $1B valuation in March, buying up robotics and engineering agentic AI startup Fid Labs to fully integrate its […]
The Pentagon is buying counter-drone technology for “real-world operational use” from a startup, but maybe not from one we’d expect. Yesterday, West Palm Beach, Florida-based drone company Powerus announced a deal with the US Air Force to supply interceptor drones “at scale,” co-founder and president Brett Velicovich told Tectonic. He couldn’t comment on the contract […]
Anduril is getting back to the basics. Everyone’s favorite neo-prime announced today the newest product in their oldest family of systems: a 5G Comms Sentry Tower (CST), built with Nokia and designed to deliver a bubble of connectivity in the most remote locations. If you thought Anduril was all-in on the boomy and zoomy things, […]
We all know autonomy is all the rage right now, but Scout AI is taking it to the next level. Yesterday, the California-based startup announced a $100M Series A co-led by Align Ventures and Draper Associates to, put simply, build the AI brain for the future of autonomous warfare. For those keeping score at home, […]
Firestorm is, well, on fire. The San Diego-based 3D-printed drone startup announced today that it’s raised an $82M Series B led by Washington Harbour Partners to scale production of its xCell containerized drone microfactories, “facilitate execution of contracts, and expand into a number of states around the country,” CEO Dan Magy told Tectonic. Looks like […]
