June 17th 2025

OF NOTE

Onebrief Reaches $1.1B Valuation; New AI Tools in Development

Onebrief announced a $20 million Series C extension led by Battery Ventures. This funding round scales the company’s valuation to $1.1 billion, an increase from the $650M valuation achieved three months prior in Onebrief’s Series C.

The announcement marks a major milestone for Onebrief. This growth comes at a time when the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is accelerating and prioritizing the need for commercial off-the-shelf software to transform and support the warfighter.

“Becoming the newest unicorn in a small group for defense tech is an incredible milestone,” said Onebrief CEO Grant Demaree. “This new funding enables us to deepen our investments in wartime resilience, reach, and artificial intelligence (AI), so our platform can keep pace with the demands of modern conflict. Battery Ventures is the ideal partner to help us realize that vision. We’re pleased to partner with them, leveraging their experience in defense tech as we progress toward this next phase.”

Onebrief transforms military collaboration from a fragmented, manual process into an integrated, intelligent workspace. Before Onebrief, military staff work was slow, inefficient, and resource-intensive due to legacy tools. Staff would spend weeks or months building tens of thousands of slides. This process would be done without version control or a way to coordinate across commands in real time.

“We were drawn to Onebrief’s experienced team and the company’s powerful vision,” said Michael Brown, a Battery Ventures general partner. “Onebrief’s technology consolidates several key elements of war planning into one platform. It’s an intuitive model that has been organically adopted in a viral, bottom-up manner in many corners of the U.S. military, including four of the seven geographic combatant commands and other important units in the critical Indo-Pacific region. We’re excited to see Onebrief continue to expand its reach and help the DoD deliver on its stated agenda of operating faster, more efficiently, and cost-effectively.”

Onebrief plans to use the funding to accelerate its engineering and expand its infrastructure to support allied and joint operations worldwide. These advancements will help drive broader utilization and readiness for potential future conflict, with the ability to support 100,000 simultaneous collaborators and remain operational under adversarial conditions.

Onebrief also will focus on advancing AI and integration capabilities to enhance decision-making. Users today report 2x efficiency and productivity gains when using the platform. This investment and focus on AI development will help Onebrief scale user productivity by 100x within the next three years.

This announcement reinforces Onebrief’s leadership in a growing defense tech market, exceeding $140 billion in annual spend. The platform is aligned with the federal government’s modernization priorities; military staff optimization has the potential to unlock over $100 billion in savings over the Future Years Defense Program.

“Our mission is to make the military staff smaller, smarter, and faster,” Demaree added. “Now, we’re one step closer to making that vision a reality.”

Army Launches Detachment 201: Executive Innovation Corps to Drive Tech Transformation

The U.S. Army is establishing Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps, a new initiative designed to fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation. On June 13, 2025, the Army will officially swear in four tech leaders.

Det. 201 is an effort to recruit senior tech executives to serve part-time in the Army Reserve as senior advisors. In this role they will work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems. By bringing private-sector know-how into uniform, Det. 201 is supercharging efforts like the Army Transformation Initiative, which aims to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal.

The four new Army Reserve Lt. Cols. are Shyam Sankar, Chief Technology Officer for Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former Chief Research Officer for OpenAI.

Their swearing-in is just the start of a bigger mission to inspire more tech pros to serve without leaving their careers, showing the next generation how to make a difference in uniform.

Safran, Bombardier Set Defense Technology Innovation Partnership

At the Paris Air Show, Safran and Bombardier Inc. signed a letter of intent this morning to explore new opportunities for collaboration and foster the joint development of innovative, high-performance and reliable technologies for defense.

This initiative will enable the two companies to leverage their complementary technological expertise and create a conducive framework for innovation and the rapid industrial scaleup of new solutions.

“Strengthening our longstanding partnership with Bombardier is a highly strategic move for both our groups,” said Olivier Andriès, Chief Executive Officer of Safran. “By combining our strengths, we’ll be well placed to accelerate innovation and deliver the advanced defense technologies of tomorrow.”

“This collaboration between Bombardier and Safran will foster the development of new solutions by leveraging our respective areas of expertise,” said Éric Martel, President and Chief Executive Officer of Bombardier. “Bombardier and its more than 18,000 people stand ready to help our nations, and others, meet their evolving defense needs.”

The aerospace sector was identified as a priority by French Prime Minister François Bayrou and Quebec Premier François Legault in a joint statement issued on June 13, highlighting the commitment of their respective governments to strengthening economic ties between Quebec and France.

INNOVATION

Three Stages of Planetary Defense for Asteroid Threats

Planetary defense tech would find and divert hard-to-spot near-Earth objects

Defence tech innovation is Europe’s ‘Do or Die’ moment

Ukraine has shown that modern warfare is a fusion of World War I and World War III – combining trench warfare with cutting-edge technologies. Europe must now master both.

Anduril tops CNBC Disruptor 50 list as interest in defense tech booms

This year’s Disruptor 50 list, topped by Anduril in the No. 1 spot, and then OpenAI, showcases 50 companies that are challenging the status quo and using technology (most often, AI) to transform a range of industries.

What’s particularly notable about this year’s list is how the sectors represented illustrate key trends not just in technology and VC, but also in politics and society. This is the first time in the 13 years of the Disruptor 50 list that it’s been topped by a defense tech company. The defense tech sector isn’t just represented by Anduril, with Flock Safety, Saronic Technologies and Shield AI also making the 2025 list.

Why the Defense Sector Is a Strategic Imperative, Not a Passing Trend

We are no longer living in an era defined by isolated conflicts or short-lived military engagements. The Russia–Ukraine war, the Israel–Hamas conflict, ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan, and the enduring civil war in Syria all point to a new geopolitical reality: we are in an age of prolonged, multi-year conflicts that reshape regional and global power structures.

These are not flashpoints, they are drawn-out struggles with open beginnings and undefined ends.

Oracle Launches First-of-its-Kind Defense Ecosystem to Redefine National Security Innovation

Oracle today announced the Oracle Defense Ecosystem, a first-of-its-kind global initiative to redefine the delivery of defense and government technology innovation.

The ecosystem is designed to strengthen U.S. and allied national security and help accelerate the disruptive potential of emerging defense technology by creating new opportunities for defense innovators to leverage the latest cloud and AI technologies. Initial members of the Oracle Defense Ecosystem include Arqit, Blackshark.ai, Entanglement, Fenix Group, now part of Nokia Federal Solutions, Koniku, Kraken, Mattermost, Metron, SensusQ, and Whitespace.

"Nothing is more important than the national security of the U.S. and its allies, and Oracle has been a cornerstone of this mission for nearly 50 years," said Rand Waldron, vice president, Oracle. "Oracle and our defense ecosystem plans to innovate and scale to help the U.S. and its allies deter conflicts and win on physical and digital battlefields."

INVESTMENT

How VCs are navigating Europe's defence spending push

As venture capital investors look to profit from Europe’s defence spending boom, speculators hunting for the next unicorn need to navigate hurdles such as EU sustainability guidelines and difficulties for start-ups in a market dominated by large prime contractors.

Two-year-old defense tech Mach Industries confirms $100M raise led by Khosla, Bedrock

Rising-star defense tech Mach Industries has announced a new $100 million round of funding at a $470 million valuation. TechCrunch first reported that this deal was in the works last month.

New investor Keith Rabois from Khosla Ventures joins existing investor Geoff Lewis of Bedrock Capital to lead the round. Existing investor Sequoia also participated. The fresh funding brings the startup’s total raised to about $185 million to date.

TECHNOLOGY

Sierra Space Unveils Defense Business

Sierra Space has launched its defense business focused on supporting national security programs through its satellite and spacecraft systems technology.

The company said Wednesday Erik Daehler, vice president of defense, satellites and spacecraft systems at Sierra Space, will oversee Sierra Space Defense.

Innovation in APS Technology: Preparing for Future Warfare

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has provided essential lessons in logistics and supply chain management, including agility, flexibility, and real-time visibility.

As the Army reduces its forward troop presence globally and the primary and secondary threats remain high, modernizing Army Prepositioned Stock (APS) is crucial to keep pace with Army 2040 and maintain deterrence relevance amidst increasing global projection requirements.

Leveraging new technologies such as autonomous drones, augmented reality lenses, predictive fleet management technology, and smart warehousing will help meet the demands of a future operational environment characterized by increased complexity, uncertainty, and competition.

Swedish military joins Telia, Ericsson to boost defense tech

The Swedish Armed Forces on Tuesday joined Telia and Ericsson's 5G innovation program to strengthen military communications, logistics, security and support interoperability within the NATO alliance.

Telecom operator Telia and mobile gear maker Ericsson partnered in 2023 to start the NorthStar 5G innovation program to experiment on the latest 5G technologies and had focused on industrial customers

Steel and Silicon: Shipbuilding’s Defense Tech Moment

Can the American military maintain deterrence in East Asia without fixing its shipbuilding? The U.S. Navy’s fleet is rusting and shrinking, while China’s grows. Last week, new data showed Chinese shipbuilding again accelerating relative to American, with 54 percent of global output, up from 35 percent a decade ago. “All of our programs are a mess,” said Secretary of the Navy John Phelan before the Senate.

Chinese military planners may conclude it is time to risk their fleet against America’s. Without strong shipbuilding, the Pentagon may hesitate to commit a fleet it cannot regenerate.

Taiwan, US defense tech firm partner on military drone program

Taiwan has signed a multi-year agreement with US defense tech firm Auterion to integrate its autonomous vehicle software into military drones.

The partnership, involving Taiwan’s National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, aims to boost Taiwan’s defense capabilities amid growing tensions with China.

Watch Tekever CEO: Europe Needs To 'Rely On Itself' For Defense Tech

The CEO of Tekever says Europe needs to create a defense ecosystem that works together to scale up the bloc's defense technology. Ricardo Mendes, who leads the company which specializes in defense and surveillance drones, spoke to Bloomberg Television's Guy Johnson from the Paris Air Show. (Source: Bloomberg)