Latest Stories
Exclusive: TERN and Sandtable Team Up
If you thought the Crow Industries and Parry Labs mash-up was the only collab to come out of the Army’s xTech Overwatch competition, think again. This morning, GPS-free navigation company TERN and AI-powered simulation and planning company Sandtable announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’re teaming up after the exercise to plug Sandtable’s […]
Ultra I&C Heads to the High North with the Canadian Military
You know how the Arctic is, like, super remote, freezing, and increasingly contested? Well, all that makes comms a bit dodgy. Yesterday, defense communications and mission-systems company Ultra I&C announced that it’s sending its Archer troposcatter beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) comms system up to the Arctic for operational trials with the Canadian Armed Forces. Tropo talk: If […]
AV Snaps Up Drone-Maker ESAero for $200M
Less than a year after dropping a cool $4.1B to acquire BlueHalo, AV—the artist formerly known as AeroVironment—is back with another acquisition. Earlier this week, the company snapped up California-based drone manufacturing and design firm ESAero for $200M. Under the deal, ESAero will function as a subsidiary of AV under its Loitering Munition Systems business […]
Merlin Goes Public on the Nasdaq
Another day, another IPO. Defense tech is entering the big leagues, baby. Yesterday, flight autonomy hotshot Merlin officially started trading on the Nasdaq as $MRLN after merging with a SPAC called Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. IV and raising about $200M in proceeds. The deal valued Merlin at $800M pre-money. In normal people speak? Merlin just […]
A Q + A with Matt Cronin, Senior National Security Advisor at a16z
If there is one VC fund you know in the defense tech world, it’s probably Andreesen Horowitz—or a16z, as the cool kids say. The firm—which just raised a casual $15B, including $1.176B for its “national interest” (defense and deep tech) focused American Dynamism fund—has backed some of the biggest names in the game, including Anduril, […]
Q + A: A.J. Bertone, Managing Partner, In-Q-Tel
If you’ve been paying attention to the past year of Tectonic (!!), you’ll recognize a sneaky three-letter acronym that pops up on a lot of defense tech cap tables: IQT. For those lucky enough not to be in the know, that stands for In-Q-Tel, a not-for-profit venture fund backed by the US government and investing […]
A Q+A with Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper
Mark Esper has spent a whole heck of a lot of time in the defense ecosystem. After a decade in uniform in the US Army, he worked as a congressional staffer, a senior policy aide to Sens. Chuck Hagel and Bill Frist, and a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the early 2000s. Then, he […]
A Q+A with Alex Ferrara, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners
If there is one fund that knows how to deploy big-time cash into tech companies, it’s Bessemer Venture Partners. The Silicon Valley fund has about $19B under management, and has invested in tech giants from LinkedIn (everyone’s fav) to Shopify. This year, the fund has turned to defense—specifically, European defense. They led Auterion’s $130M Series […]
