Latest Stories
Isembard Raises $50M Series A
Manufacturing is so back, baby. Well, at least if AI and defense are involved. Yesterday, UK-based advanced manufacturing startup Isembard announced it has raised a $50M Series A round led by Union Square Ventures to accelerate its plan to open 25 factories by the end of the year. CEO Alexander Fitzgerald told Tectonic that most […]
Scout Ventures Raises $125M Fund V
If anyone thought the defense tech hype train was slowing down, think again. This morning, Austin-based fund Scout Ventures announced that it’s closed a $125M Fund V to invest in tech companies that are building “artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, space infrastructure, cyber, quantum, and advanced power technologies.” The new fund brings total funding raised by […]
Exclusive: R2 Wireless Raises an Additional $5M
We’re sensing that things are just starting to heat up on the drone detection front, and investors are, too. This morning, Israeli-American radio frequency (RF) sensing startup R2 Wireless announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it raised $5M in a funding round led by Origin Ventures, with participation from Spring Rock Capital, Corner […]
Dominion Dynamics Invests $37M to Get Canada in the CCA Game
After a quiet few years, it looks like our friendly neighbors up north are diving headfirst into defense tech. Hot off a $15.2M ($21M CAD) seed round in January, Canadian defense tech startup Dominion Dynamics kicked things up a notch late last week, announcing plans to invest $37M ($50M CAD) to kickstart development of Scout, […]
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 […]
