national-security
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Parsons makes the complicated work
A metro, a missile defense network, a contaminated airfield. Parsons works where separate systems have to behave as one - and its own setbacks show how hard that promise is to keep.
CACI makes the invisible useful.
A company built around a simulation language now works across drone defense, space sensors, and government software. Its big wager: customers will pay more for an outcome than an hour.
Defense Unicorns makes software work off the grid
A fighter jet can carry modern software and still be hard to update. Defense Unicorns is building the delivery system for the places the internet cannot follow.
Acclaim Technical Services: Intelligence takes people.
A translator, a software engineer and a cyber operator have more in common than a security clearance. At ATS, they belong to a business built to bring their work together - and give employees a stake in the result.
Castelion’s real weapon is the factory.
Blackbeard flies at hypersonic speed. Castelion’s bigger bet is that America can build enough of them to matter - and afford to keep building.
Catalyst Campus makes the Pentagon a little easier to meet
Inside a former railroad depot in Colorado Springs, small technology companies get closer to the people who might actually use their inventions. The hard part comes after the introduction.
Second Front sells the government a shorter wait
Useful software can spend longer waiting for permission than being built. Second Front turns that queue into a business, with an accredited platform that helped one Air Force supplier get through in 58 days.
Govini and the expensive art of finding a missing part
A missile can outlive the company that made its components. Govini built a business tracing those hidden dependencies - and, as Air, is taking on the larger problem of keeping defense ready.
Clearview AI made the internet a police lineup
A face, a photograph, a possible name. Clearview AI sells investigators a shortcut through 70 billion images - and has made the meaning of “public” a very expensive argument.
Voyager Labs and the price of connecting the dots
Voyager Labs sells AI that turns scattered online traces into investigative leads. Its story reveals why finding a connection is only the beginning of deciding what that connection means.
Pacific Fusion’s billion-dollar bet on the parts you throw away
To make fusion electricity affordable, Pacific Fusion is attacking the cost of each shot. Its wager combines disposable targets, factory-built pulsers and a $1 billion financing round tied to technical milestones.
Sentar secures the systems you forget to worry about
A missile-defense radar needs cooling. A ventilator needs a safe network connection. Sentar has built a business around the overlooked dependencies that keep consequential machines working.
Research Innovations sells the hard part: getting defense tech into the field
A $96.9 million Army contract puts RII’s Dragonfly sensors on a new procurement path. Behind the hardware is a company built around an awkward truth: useful defense technology has to survive the journey from demonstration to daily use.
Accrete and the things nobody writes down
The expensive part of expertise is often the part missing from the manual. Accrete wants to turn that unwritten knowledge into software that can trace a supplier, follow a narrative and question an IT change.
Athenix Solutions Group and the Case for the Middleweight
Athenix assembled specialists in software, intelligence, and mission rehearsal around a bet on the middle of the defense market. Its September 2026 acquisition by Detroit Defense gives that bet a new setting.
The $25,000 Search Box That Taught the Pentagon to Buy Software
Vannevar Labs began with an Arabic OCR project nobody urgently needed. Then two engineers built one useful search box - and discovered that in defense technology, relevance beats polish every time.
The Company That Knows Which Door Opens Next
Bondi Partners sells something more useful than access: a map of who matters, what changes next, and how an ambitious company turns policy into a contract.
Plexal’s next race: turning startup introductions into contracts
Born on London’s Olympic campus, Plexal grew from workspace into a partner for government technology programmes. Its next test is helping the companies it supports win customers who keep buying.
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.
Naimuri: The £25 Million Software Company Built for Problems That Cannot Leak
Naimuri grew by solving the sort of data problems that arrive wrapped in security constraints. Six years after QinetiQ bought it, the Salford firm is applying its lean creed to cloud platforms, graph analytics and the awkward economics of AI.
The Software That Taught Investigators to See the Hidden Network
Before knowledge graphs became a boardroom phrase, i2 was helping detectives turn phone logs and witness statements into maps of who knew whom. Thirty-six years later, its most important feature is still the one no model can automate away: showing the analyst their work.
Babel Street Built an AI Analyst for People Who Can't Afford a Bad Guess
The Washington intelligence-software company spent years helping analysts search a noisy world. Now it is asking AI agents to do the legwork - while humans keep the last word.
Canada Gave Defence $51.7 Billion. The Arctic Asked for a Better Plan.
Canada's defence machine is getting bigger, more digital and more Arctic. Its most useful lesson is not how to spend more - it is how to admit when an old plan no longer survives contact with the North.
The Startup Trying to Kill the Military's Most Dangerous Weapon: PowerPoint
A West Point officer watched treatment units get built where the virus had already left. He sketched the fix on a napkin. Six years later it is worth $2.15 billion.
The Small New York Fund Betting the Next Tech Boom Will Be Built in Concrete, Code and Salt Water
Danu Venture Group is assembling an unusually literal infrastructure portfolio: robots that wash buildings, boats that map oceans, software that audits cyber controls and machines designed to cut underground power corridors. Its wager is that the next technology cycle will be measured not only in model parameters, but in what gets built, secured and kept running.
The Firm That Builds Companies From a CIA Playbook
Most venture firms wait for founders to walk in the door. Red Cell Partners writes the idea first, then goes hunting for the people to build it - a studio model borrowed straight from the intelligence community.
The Venture Fund Where the Partners Used to Run the Missions
New North Ventures backs founders building for both the Pentagon and the marketplace - a dual-use bet led by former intelligence operators and the entrepreneur who built Dyn.
The Recruiter and the Rocket Scientist Funding America's Hard Tech
A recruiter who once staffed early Snap and Tinder teamed up with a rocket engineer to fund the companies most VCs can't read a spec sheet for - and got the Space Force to sign first.
The VC Firm Where the Founders Salute First
Justin Nahama and three partners are betting that the discipline that runs toward gunfire also builds companies. Their first fund is oversubscribed, their portfolio has raised over $350 million, and a $50 million second fund is now open.
Distributed Spectrum
Distributed Spectrum builds AI-powered radio-frequency sensors and software that automatically detect, classify, and locate signals - drones, jammers, tactical radios, GPS spoofers - in real time. Founded by three Harvard engineers, the company packs commercial hardware and edge AI into sub-one-pound sensors that give soldiers and analysts persistent spectrum awareness without specialist RF expertise. It raised a $25M Series A in March 2025 and has fielded systems with US military branches and partners in Ukraine.