There’s a lot of hype around both building drones and, if you’ve been keeping up with Tectonic, making them super autonomous, but SkyfireAI is more focused on building the software around existing drones to make them easier for pilots to use. That’s been a popular selling point with a lot of public safety agencies, and […]
We’ve spent a heck of a lot of time talking about stuff that flies and goes boom lately, so today we’re gonna mix it up a lil’ bit. This morning, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, ground autonomy wunderkind Forterra unveiled a new autonomous vehicle called MESA, built on a “factory modified” Polaris Ranger XD 1500. The […]
Looks like no one’s found the shut-off valve on the defense tech funding tap just yet. This morning, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, New York-based VC Nomi Capital announced that it raised a $50M Fund I that it will deploy into later-stage defense tech startups this year, with over $20M of that already allocated […]
Hypersonics are moving from hype to cold hard cash pretty dang fast. On Friday afternoon, the Navy announced that it’s awarded a big-time $105M contract to hypersonic startup Castelion to integrate its Blackbeard hypersonic missile onto the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and accelerate testing to get the platform to Early Operational Capability by next year. The […]
If you’re a regular reader of Tectonic, you’ll know that the US has a bit of an energetics problem. Luckily, one organization is setting out to try and fix that. Earlier this week, ACMI Federal (part of the American Center for Manufacturing & Innovation) announced that it’s won $50M from the Naval Surface Warfare Center, […]
The drone dollars keep on coming. Yesterday, California-based drone hotshot Skydio announced a $110M Series F, boosting its valuation from $2.5B after its 2024 Series E extension to an eye-watering $4.4B. The raise comes exactly a month after the company snagged a $52M US Army contract for 2,500 of its X10D small-UAS—the largest sUAS order […]
Looks like the big dogs are finally realizing that a lot of the tech they need might very well be sitting right here in startup land. Yesterday, up-and-coming defense company Lockheed Martin announced a $25M investment into Utah-based counter-drone startup Fortem Technologies, a sum that represents, according to the prime, “the initial tranche of Fortem’s […]
Vermeer CEO Brian Streem is quickly becoming Mr. Worldwide. This morning, the Ukrainian-American drone visual navigation startup announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it’s expanding operations to India and will begin selling its systems there through a local partner called Athena Intelligent Solutions. The team-up means Vermeer now has direct access to the […]
Overland AI’s souped-up autonomous ATV, ULTRA, has been a hit with the Army, but the Marine Corps is, quite literally, thinking bigger. The Seattle-based ground autonomy startup announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic today that it’s on contract with the Marines to integrate its OverDrive autonomy stack on the Corps’ ROGUE Fires prototype vehicle—and […]
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 […]
