Latest Stories
Lockheed Taps Machina Labs for JASSM Missile Parts
Turns out an old dog can, in fact, learn new tricks, or at least can find a young gun to teach it. This morning, robo-manufacturing startup Machina Labs announced that it’s inked a qualification contract with mega-prime Lockheed Martin (which, conveniently, also sits on Machina’s cap table through its venture arm) for Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff […]
ICYMI: ReElement Scores $25M from the Pentagon
If you weren’t sold on the whole “the US is getting hella serious about rare earths and critical minerals” thing, well, the Pentagon is back to prove you wrong—again. In case you missed it, on Monday the DoD announced that the Economic Defense Unit (EDU), in partnership with the Office of the Under Secretary of […]
Exclusive: Ursa Major Snags $10M Navy Contract for MK 104 Rocket Engines
In case you hadn’t noticed, the long-consolidated and constrained solid rocket motor (SRM) industry is getting dragged into the future with the help of a few startups, some fancy advanced manufacturing tech, and a military desperate to shore up its shrinking munitions stockpile. Ursa Major is one of the startups leading the charge. This morning, […]
Interceptor Startup Singularity Emerges from Stealth with an $80M Series A at a $400M Valuation
The drone interceptor world is, like, hotter than hot right now, and investors aren’t showing any signs of backing down just yet. This morning, Singularity emerged after two years in stealth with an $80M Series A led by Khosla Ventures and Felicis, a $400M valuation, and a mission to deploy “low-cost air defense systems at […]
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 […]
