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Outpost Ventures Checkmate Wants to Win the Contract After the Contract
A first Pentagon award can keep a startup busy. Outpost Ventures Checkmate helps founders pursue what comes next: a government customer, a bigger contract and a business that can survive between the two.
Outpost Ventures Wants Uncle Sam on the Cap Table’s Side
The Alexandria investor backs technology with two potential buyers: business and government. Its bet is that public funding can help private capital carry expensive inventions further.
The Austin Drone Company Betting the Air Force Will Ditch the $30,000 Helicopter Hour
Skyways flies cargo drones nobody steers - no joystick, no remote pilot - between air bases and out to oil rigs. Now it wants to turn a hand-built aircraft into a production line.
Grid Aero
Grid Aero is a Palo Alto aerospace and defense startup building the Lifter-Lite, an autonomous, long-range, heavy-lift cargo drone designed to move thousands of pounds across thousands of miles for military and commercial customers. Founded in 2024 by Arthur Dubois - a veteran of Joby Aviation and Xwing - the company is targeting contested logistics in the Pacific theater and remote civilian routes, with a deliberately simple airframe and AI-enhanced autonomy.
Jericho Security
Jericho Security is a New York-based cybersecurity company that uses generative AI to defend organizations against AI-powered attacks. Its platform runs hyper-realistic, AI-generated phishing, voice-clone, and deepfake simulations to train employees, then measures human risk through a dashboard of analytics and KPIs. Founded in 2023, the company pits an AI 'red team' against an AI 'blue team' to find and close the gaps attackers now exploit at machine speed - an approach it sums up as fighting AI with AI.