Latest Stories
Exclusive: TAG Capital Raises $100M Infrastructure Fund
Well, New Mexico is turning out to be the land of enchantment—at least for a few lucky deep tech firms. This morning, a new NM–based company, Tierra Adentro Growth (TAG) Capital (say that five times fast, nerds), announced in an exclusive interview with Tectonic that it has raised a $100M deep tech infrastructure fund focused […]
Founders Fund Raises a Record $6B Fourth Fund
If anyone thought the collective spending spree on defense tech was coming to an end any time soon, think again. Over the weekend, Bloomberg reported that Founders Fund—the 21-year-old VC firm co-founded by Peter Thiel—raised its fourth and largest fund to date: A $6B fund dedicated to later-stage companies, including another big bet on Anduril, […]
Nominal Acquires Fid Labs
When we said the data nerds over at Nominal are on a bit of a heater a few weeks ago, we weren’t kidding. Yesterday, the hardware testing company unveiled its first acquisition after raising $80M at a $1B valuation in March, buying up robotics and engineering agentic AI startup Fid Labs to fully integrate its […]
Air Force Snaps Up Powerus Interceptor Drones
The Pentagon is buying counter-drone technology for “real-world operational use” from a startup, but maybe not from one we’d expect. Yesterday, West Palm Beach, Florida-based drone company Powerus announced a deal with the US Air Force to supply interceptor drones “at scale,” co-founder and president Brett Velicovich told Tectonic. He couldn’t comment on the contract […]
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 […]
