Time for a riddle: what swims below the ocean surface, can carry explosive payloads, and has just raised a big ol’ funding round? As it turns out—Vatn Systems. This morning, the Rhode Island–based autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) startup announced that it closed a $60M Series A led by BVVC, with participation from investors including Hanwha, […]
Remember when we were way in the weeds on the nuts and bolts, unsexy side of the defense industry? Well, we’re back—it’s time to talk contracting. This morning, AI-powered government market intelligence platform (say that five times fast) Pryzm announced that it’s raised $12.2M in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with participation from XYZ, […]
Shipbuilding is so back, baby. Less than a week after announcing a whopping $300M investment in its Louisiana shipyard, Texas-based autonomous shipbuilder Saronic revealed yesterday that it’s won a $392M Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) to supply the Navy with an undisclosed number of unmanned surface vessels. Talk about demand signal. Making a splash: The $392M […]
The hype for hypersonics is back, baby. On Friday, El Segundo-based hypersonic missile startup Castelion announced that they’ve officially closed their $350M Series B, led by Altimeter Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Lavrock Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, First In, Space VC, Cantos, BlueYard, Avenir, Champion Hill, and Interlagos. The round—first rumored […]
We can all breathe a sigh of relief. On Sunday night, Congress finally released a compromise draft of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a breezy 3,000-page bill that authorizes a record $901B in defense spending, $8B more than the White House initially requested. The must-pass bill is headed for a vote in the coming […]
If anyone thinks M&A isn’t the road to success, someone better tell the defense tech world—and fast. Earlier this week, European defense tech darling STARK announced that it has acquired AeroMass Technologies, a “distributed manufacturing company” that says it builds “scalable, attritable systems for the modern battlefield.” The move comes just a few months after […]
When you think of European defense tech hotspots, Croatia probably isn’t the first country that comes to mind—but maybe it should. Earlier this week, Orqa FPV announced that it has boosted its annual production capacity to 280,000 NDAA-compliant, Chinese-component-free FPV drones at its headquarters in Osijek, Croatia. That big bump, CEO Srdjan Kovacevic told Tectonic, […]
If you’ve been tracking some numbers coming out of the Pentagon recently, you’ll have seen a whole lot of zeroes. Earlier this week, the Department of Defense/War (take your pick, we don’t judge) dropped a whopping $150B solicitation for the Missile Defense Agency’s Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) program, tapping over 1,000 “qualifying […]
Saronic is making a big splash down south. On Wednesday, the autonomous surface vessel (ASV) heavyweight announced it’s making a $300M investment in its Franklin, Louisiana, shipyard, a move the company says will speed up its delivery of those robo-ships the Navy so desperately wants. Future fleet, here we come. Splashing around: Saronic has a […]
We’ve talked a lot about electronic warfare recently, and it looks like we’re not stopping anytime soon. This morning, in an exclusive interview with Tectonic, Sky Spy—a signal intelligence startup born on Ukraine’s frontlines—announced that they’ve raised a $1.6M pre-seed led by Expeditions Fund and Superangel, with participation from Freedom Fund, Sunfish Partners, Crosscourt Ventures, […]
