Latest Stories
Noda AI Wins $10M for Orchestration across LUCAS and Other Unmanned Platforms
If you thought you’d heard the last of the LUCAS program, think again. Yesterday, orchestration startup NODA AI announced that it’s won a $10M contract with the Pentagon to develop MAESTRO (Multi-Domain Autonomous Enhanced System for Tactical Reasoning and Orchestration), algorithms designed “to project commander’s intent into coordinated autonomous action across air, maritime, ground, and […]
CoAspire Wins $70M US Navy CHAOS OTA
Well, the hottest missile startup you probably haven’t heard of is having a very exciting July. Yesterday, missile startup CoAspire announced that the US Navy has selected a ground-launched variant of its Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile-Extended Range (RAACM-ER) for its Coalition Heterogeneous Affordable Offensive Strike (CHAOS) program. Under a $70M OTA, the company “will […]
Exclusive: Underwater Sensing Startup Andrenam Raises $18M
There’s a popular saying that we know less about the ocean than space. Andrenam is on a mission to change that. The California-based startup is building a distributed network of underwater acoustic sensors and the AI-powered software to process all of the data they collect. That fits cleanly into the whole “maritime is all the […]
The Marines Take Allen Control Systems’ Counter-Drone Machine Gun Mobile
Allen Control Systems certainly isn’t resting on its laurels after raising $200M at a multi-billion-dollar valuation. The Austin-based counter-drone startup announced this week that the Marine Corps has selected its Bullfrog robo-machine gun for the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System (LMADIS), the service’s most expeditionary vehicle-based c-UAS platform, under its broader Ground Based Air […]
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 […]
