Latest Stories
Exclusive: X-Bow Successfully Tests 34.5-inch SRM
Big week for propulsion around here. This morning, solid rocket motor startup X-Bow Systems announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’ve successfully tested their 34.5-inch Ballesta SRM, first unveiled in 2022. The big-boy motor—which has more thrust and can get up to super-fast speeds more quickly—is best suited for launch for big ol’ […]
Castelion Snags $50M Navy Contract for Blackbeard Missiles
The hype for hypersonics keeps getting more real. Yesterday, the Pentagon announced that mass-producible hypersonic missile hotshot Castelion was awarded a $50M contract with the US Navy for the “full-scale prototypes, flight testing, and operational fielding” of its Blackbeard missile, which COO Sean Pitt told Tectonic will be an air-launched variant. The Los Angeles-based startup […]
Vantor Snags $217M-Ceiling Army Contract
Things keep getting busier and busier in Vantor-land. On the heels of a deal to integrate with Google’s high-powered Earth AI model, the geospatial intelligence heavyweight announced a big ol’ follow-on contract with the US Army worth up to $217M to continue work on the service’s One World Terrain program, designed to “train and rehearse […]
Firehawk and UNION Team Up
Welp, everyone really be out here just forming cliques. Yesterday, 3D-printed propellant hotshot (get it) Firehawk announced that it’s teaming up with manufacturing startup UNION to “[bring] together UNION’s software-defined factory platform and metal parts manufacturing with Firehawk’s advanced energetics and propulsion manufacturing platform.” In particular, the two companies say they’re banding together to work […]
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 […]
