Lock in, kids. It’s time for a dose of the super-scary, invisible threats we all know and love. This morning, Ginkgo Biosecurity—the biosecurity arm of Ginkgo Bioworks—officially spun out from its Boston-based parent company as Perimeter. The new firm—led by founder and CEO Matt McKnight—has already secured a cool $60M in growth capital from Kanders […]
Dare we say it seems like the Pentagon might actually be getting with the El Segundo vibe? This morning, LA-based CX2 announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that its Wraith “airborne EW system” (drone) and another yet-to-be-announced product have been selected for Design Reference Mission 3 (DRM3) under the Defense Innovation Unit’s Project G.I. […]
Interceptors really are so hot right now. This morning at the London Defense Conference, UK Secretary of State for Defense John Healey announced that the MoD will buy “hundreds” of Skyhammer interceptors from startup Cambridge Aerospace as part of a “multi-million-pound” contract. The deal covers “integration, technical support, and end user training,” and the company […]
Those Ukrainian defense tech companies we have been going on and on about are certainly having a moment. On Tuesday, Croatian drone hotshot Orqa FPV announced that it’s inked a “memorandum of cooperation” with Ukrainian interceptor wunderkind General Cherry to bring the latter’s tech to Europe and NATO. The two companies plan to start co-producing […]
Well, if you thought that the LA defense tech scene couldn’t get any hotter, think again. Yesterday, super-ultra-fast aircraft company Hermeus announced that they’ve raised a cool $350M Series C at a $1B valuation and that they’re building a big ol’ HQ in El Segundo. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with continued support […]
Well, the dronemakers are certainly stepping up their game. This morning, Huntsville-based Cummings Aerospace announced that they’ve successfully completed arena testing for an anti-armor warhead for their three-foot-long Hellhound S3 drone. Cummings founder and CEO Sheila Cummings told Tectonic that the warhead-equipped drone was able to blast through several sheets of steel—mimicking a tank or […]
Well, the $1.5T defense budget is here, friends. In case you missed it—on Friday, the Trump administration unveiled its FY2027 budget request. As promised, it included a chunk for defense ($1.15T discretionary and $350B mandatory, reconciliation style), larger than the GDP of Turkey. Yes, that is a real statistic. On the menu? Big bucks for […]
Well, these certainly ain’t your granny’s quadcopter drones. Yesterday, autonomy and swarming software hotshot Auterion announced that it has teamed up with UK-based MGI Engineering—a, well, engineering firm—to successfully fly a cruise missile-like drone called TigerShark in the UK. According to the two companies, TigerShark can: MGI and Auterion say this is “the first time […]
You know an industry is blowing up when the private equity (PE) guys are coming for it. Yesterday, New York and Florida-based PE fund OceanSound Partners closed a $3.4B Fund II to invest in “technology and technology-enabled services companies serving aerospace, defense, government and highly regulated enterprise end markets.” The oversubscribed fund (goal was $2B) […]
In case you weren’t aware, defense isn’t always about the stuff that goes boom. Sometimes it’s about the (arguably much scarier) stuff we can’t immediately see. Lucky for us, a newly funded startup is here to help. This morning, Dutch biotech company Inbiome announced that it has raised a $16M Series A co-led by the […]
