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 […]
Valinor launched last year with a focus on building the unsexy but critically important tech for modern conflict, and that pitch is starting to pay off. This morning, the new-age defense tech holding company announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it secured a Marine Corps contract for Harbor, its modern, mobile, and software-centric […]
Our drone boat friends over in Fareham are certainly having quite the week. Yesterday, everyone’s favorite new age defense company (Anduril) announced that it’s teaming up with UK-founded Kraken Technology Group to bring the company’s “proven family of small, high-performance, mass-producible USVs” to the US. The announcement comes just a day after Rheinmetall—that tiny German […]
Our friends over at Shield AI are having quite the start to the year. Yesterday, the San Diego-based autonomy giant announced that it’s been tapped by the US Navy to compete for $800M in ISR services with its VTOL V-BAT drone. AV—FKA AeroVironment—also announced that it had been selected to compete for the contractor-owned, contractor-operated […]
