The Women Investors to Know in Defense Tech; A New Era of Defense Giants

OF NOTE

Vibrint Acquires Ampsight to Build National Security Footprint, Broaden Mission Solutions

Vibrint, a trusted defense technology leader, announced the acquisition of Ampsight, a premier provider of multi-cloud engineering, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence solutions for federal agencies.

This acquisition brings Vibrint into new customer organizations including the geospatial community and strengthens the company’s ability to deliver tailored, high-performance technologies across the full IT lifecycle — combining agility, technical depth, and mission alignment to support today’s most complex national security challenges.

“Ampsight brings unique strengths in cloud, cybersecurity, and AI — especially in areas like explainable AI for geospatial and multimodal data — that directly align with the future of mission operations,” said Tom Lash, CEO of Vibrint. “Having worked within the Geospatial Intelligence field and closely with its leaders for over 30 years, this strategic step for Vibrint carries personal meaning for me. I look forward to working with Ampsight to harness their powerful expertise, energy and insight to collaborate for customer success.”

With nearly a decade of experience migrating complex workloads and securing mission-critical environments, Ampsight is widely recognized for its deep expertise in AI/ML, remote sensing, and cloud-native security frameworks. Its work in explainable AI, particularly in making complex machine learning models more interpretable for geospatial intelligence and multimodal analysis, fills a critical gap in the federal market as agencies seek to scale AI adoption without compromising transparency, accountability, or operational trust. Based in Sterling, Virginia, Ampsight also extends the Vibrint footprint to Northern Virginia.

INNOVATION

Another Last Supper and a New Era of Defense Giants

The Pentagon is claiming to make room for small businesses, but in practice it’s reinforcing a new class of giants, and propping up legacy companies. Despite policy shifts, the Defense Department’s appetite for consolidation remains as strong as ever, leaving small businesses on the menu, not at the table.

Today’s defense market consolidation mirrors the patterns that followed the infamous “last supper” of the 1990s. While emerging defense technology companies position themselves as disruptors, they follow remarkably similar consolidation playbooks to those used by the primes they claim to challenge. The result is not the diverse, resilient industrial base needed for future challenges, but rather a new revolving triangle of influence connecting Pentagon leadership, technology-focused contractors, and venture capital firms.

Tech billionaire Palmer Luckey wants to remake the U.S. military with autonomous weapons

People thought flip flop- and Hawaiian shirt-wearing tech billionaire Palmer Luckey, 32, was nuts when he launched defense products startup Anduril Industries.

There hadn't been a new company in the defense industry in any significant way since the end of the Cold War, but Luckey had his own vision for the future of warfare: one with autonomous, AI-powered weapons and a different business model than the five "prime" defense contractors in the U.S.

Trump Announces 6th-Generation Fighter Jet Named F-47; Air Force Contract Awarded to Boeing

Dubbed the Next Generation Air Dominance platform, or NGAD, the now-designated F-47 has been shrouded in secrecy for years, as the Air Force quietly tested experimental aircraft while Boeing and Lockheed Martin competed for the contract to build it.

Roadrunner and Coyote: Navy Set to Deploy Land-Based Anti-Drone Systems at Sea

"We're going to be deploying the Ford strike group with two additional missile systems on our destroyers -- the Roadrunner system and the Coyote system -- both specifically designed to go after UAVs," or unmanned aerial vehicles, Adm. Daryl Caudle, the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces, told reporters last week.

TECHNOLOGY

How China’s tech giants wired the Gulf

Ubiquitous Chinese gear, infrastructure, and deals belie the narrative of close U.S.-Gulf cooperations—and raise grave security concerns.

Vertical Aerospace has a plan to capitalize on Europe's defense tech moment

Russia’s war in Ukraine and President Donald Trump’s reluctance to support NATO allies has led to a boost in funding for European defense tech. And across industries, startups are leveraging the opportunity.

Why the Nuclear Gravity Bomb Has Gotten a Reboot

Within months of the Cuban Missile Crisis, weapons designers at Los Alamos National Laboratory began engineering what would become the longest-serving and most adaptable weapon in America’s nuclear arsenal.

Although it was ballistic missiles that had sparked the crisis in Cuba and came to symbolize the nuclear age, the new B61 would be an air-delivered gravity bomb. So named because it is dropped from an aircraft, gravity bombs had been a feature of aerial warfare since wooden biplanes released them over the trenches in World War I. But the B61 was a revolutionary weapon, featuring a versatility not seen in a nuclear munition before or since.

INVESTMENT

The women investors to know in defence tech

In the male-dominated defence space, here are some of the women investing in the market

Defense Tech Startup Chaos Industries Hits $2B Valuation

Less than six months after raising a $145 million in a Series B, defense and critical infrastructure tech startup Chaos Industries locked up a $275 million Series C that reportedly values the company at $2 billion.

Accel Backs Defense Tech Startup Chaos Industries At $2 Billion Valuation

Accel is co-leading a $275 million funding round into Chaos Industries, a defense tech company that sells a suite of communications and radar products, another major bet for the firm on emerging defense companies.

The new funding for Los Angeles-based Chaos, a Series C round, will value the company at $2 billion, multiple people with knowledge of the deal told Forbes. New Enterprise Associates also co-led the round.

This American VC is betting on European defense tech; that's still very unusual

VCs are known to move in herds, which is why Eric Slesinger stands out a bit. While most American investors chase AI startups or U.S.-based defense tech startups, the former CIA officer is hunting for defense tech deals in Europe.

In fact, Slesinger, founder of 201 Ventures, recently closed a $22 million fund focused on seed-stage European defense tech startups. His path from developing gadgets and software for CIA agents to becoming perhaps the only American VC exclusively investing in European defense tech also appears to be a prescient one.

Europe’s defense spending should focus on innovation

Significant institutional changes are needed to create an environment where new technologies can thrive.