In 2023, defense tech recruiter Peterson Conway VIII pulled up to the offices of nuclear fusion startup Fuse in a black suburban, donning his signature cowboy hat. He picked up a recent Fuse hire and proceeded to regale her with stories of his old recruiting days. One story involved prostitutes attending a recruiting event (“not […]
Two big defense tech players, Palantir and Anduril, are talking to tech companies including SpaceX, OpenAI, Saronic, and Scale AI about forming a consortium to bid on Pentagon contracts, according to a report in the Financial Times. The goal, the FT says, is to challenge the dominance of “prime” defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon,
Palantir and Anduril reportedly building a tech consortium to bid on defense contracts Read More »
AI is everywhere. And increasingly it’s being described as defense tech. This week, the Equity pod gang — which included newcomer Max Zeff, Margaux MacColl, and Kirsten Korosec — noticed an emerging trend: the worlds of AI and defense tech are colliding. And that matters, for a few reasons. For one, venture money is flowing
Are AI companies just defense tech now? Read More »
Cohere is one of the best-known AI startups outside of OpenAI and Anthropic, hitting a $5.5 billion valuation as of July as we previously reported. It’s co-founded by an author of the ‘Attention is All You Need’ paper that helped launch the LLM revolution. Based in Toronto and San Francisco, Cohere sells AI to the
Cohere is quietly working with Palantir to deploy its AI models Read More »
Palantir now owns 8.7% of struggling electric vehicle startup Faraday Future, according to a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The data-mining company was granted more than 800,000 shares in the EV startup on October 2 “as payment for certain outstanding receivables” — the equivalent of roughly $2.4 million judging by Faraday
Palantir now owns nearly 9% of EV startup Faraday Future — here’s why Read More »
The success of Palantir and Anduril hasn’t just spawned a new generation of aspiring tech companies looking to elbow between Boeing and Lockheed as new defense primes. It has now created a new ecosystem of startups that can serve other defense tech startups. One such startup is Pryzm, founded in 2022 to streamline data around
Last week, Anduril and Palantir delivered the first Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) — picture a tactical military truck designed to sweep up massive amounts of data from sensors in space, as well as across terrains and high altitudes — reaching the first major milestone in its $178 million contract with the U.S. Army.
Anduril reaches milestone with major defense hardware contract Read More »
Small VC firms require deep trust, mutual support, and long-term commitment among the partners —a kinship that, in many ways, resembles a family dynamic. Colin Anderson (Palantir’s ex-CFO and former research VP at Peter Thiel’s Clarium Capital) and John Fogelsong (the son of IVP co-founder Norm Fogelsong) didn’t need to cultivate a family-like relationship before
