Latest Stories
Exclusive: H4D Heads to Germany
The Hacking for Defense Empire is expanding—and this time, to continental Europe. This morning, the Common Mission Project (CMP) announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’re officially launching the Hacking for Defense (H4D) academic program in Germany in partnership with the University of the Bundeswehr (UniBwM). The program—founded by Pete Newell, Steve Blank, […]
Exclusive: Crow Industries and Parry Labs Team Up
If you thought we were done with the partnership news, well, think again. The mash-ups continue, baby. This morning, robotics startup Crow Industries and Parry Labs announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’re teaming up to build Parry’s edge compute and autonomy stack onto Crow’s Fenris UGV. “We were both finalists in the […]
UFORCE Exits Stealth as a Unicorn
Remember all those videos of Ukrainian sea drones taking out Russia’s Black Sea Fleet? Well, UFORCE, the company making those USVs and a whole range of unmanned systems, officially emerged from stealth today with a $1B+ valuation after raising over $50M from a transatlantic team led by Shield Capital and Lakestar. Good news for all […]
Hermeus’ Latest Quarterhorse Supersonic Unmanned Aircraft Takes Flight
Things are speeding up on the supersonic front, and fast. High-speed aircraft company Hermeus announced this week that it has successfully completed a flight test of its unmanned Quarterhorse Mk 2.1, which it calls the “world’s first high-Mach remotely piloted aircraft,” less than a year after the first iteration took flight. Everyone loves a spicy […]
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 […]
