Aviation autonomy is all the rage these days, but Beacon AI is less concerned with automating the piloting part and more focused on all of the brain-draining, paper-pushing stuff pilots and crews have to do before takeoff and in the air. And the Air Force is taking notice. On Wednesday, in an exclusive release to […]
Everywhere you look in NATO, defense tech startups are popping off, but our friendly neighbors up north have (for the most part) stayed out of the spotlight. Dominion Dynamics wants to change that. On Monday, the Canadian startup announced it has raised $15.2M ($21M CAD) in seed funding to develop a persistent multi-domain surveillance and […]
Well, it would appear that investors’ appetite for rare earths ain’t goin’ nowhere. Yesterday, US rare earths magnet manufacturer Noveon Magnetics announced that it’s closed a $215M Series C led by a whopping $200M investment from One Investment Management (OneIM). The company says that this big ol’ pile of cash will fuel “significant growth” of […]
This may come as a departure from Tectonic’s usual lighthearted coverage, but at the end of the day, it’s our responsibility to report on all of the defense tech industry—even the gritty bits. The US Navy’s former Program Executive Officer for Unmanned and Small Combatants (PEO USC), Rear Adm. Kevin Smith, was fired from his […]
Seasats is making a splash in the unmanned surface vessel (USV) space. Yesterday, California-based USV startup Seasats announced that it’s been awarded a joint $24M contract with the Navy and Marines under the APFIT program to accelerate production and delivery of its Lightfish USVs. This comes on the heels of the company scoring a $89M […]
The Marines have a bunch o’ Bolts heading their way. On Thursday, defense tech poster child Anduril announced that the US Marine Corps placed a $24M order for 600 of the company’s Bolt-M kamikaze drones under the Organic Precision Fires-Light (OPF-L) program, with deliveries expected between 2026 and 2027. Bolt goes boom: Weighing around 15 […]
Looks like at least one RACER has crossed the finish line. On Wednesday, DARPA announced that the Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program, launched in 2021 to develop new vehicle autonomy algorithm technologies, has officially wrapped up. Now, it’s up to the autonomy companies that spun out of it—including Overland AI—to keep […]
Guess what, guys? The defense tech dudes are forming new cliques. This morning, AI-for-defense powerhouse Raft announced that it’s launched a “partner program [that’s] designed to help industry partners rapidly build, integrate, and deploy mission-ready applications on top” of Raft’s data and AI programs. The idea is that because Raft is already plugged into the […]
DIU is wasting no time getting to work under its new leadership. Last night, the innovation unit posted a new $100M (yes, $100M) prize challenge to “prototype market-ready solutions to establish a robust, scalable and vehicle-agnostic capability for understanding, tasking and coordinating autonomous systems at the fleet level.” Using normal words: They’re looking for a […]
Whatever image you have of what batteries look like, forget it. On Tuesday, Miami-based 3D-printed battery startup Material announced it had raised a $7.1M seed round co-led by Outlander VC and Harpoon Ventures. The company is taking aim at a surprisingly persistent problem: Batteries power nearly everything we write about, yet they’re rarely designed for […]
