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Here are the top tech startups disrupting the defense industry — and what they’re selling

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Here are the top tech startups disrupting the defense industry — and what they’re selling

  • Rapid advancements in AI and military tech are reshaping global national security.
  • A new cadre of tech-minded defense companies is securing huge military contracts.
  • One makes AI drones for $30 million apiece; another a $66 million device that can take them down.

Silicon Valley is going to war.

A new cadre of tech startups is muscling its way into the entrenched defense industry, leveraging rapid advancements in AI and other military technologies to bring warfare into the future and win lucrative military contracts.

Traditional defense powerhouses like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Boeing typically dominate big-dollar American military deals. But tech advancements in the last 20 years, coupled with plenty of investment money to go around, have allowed new players to emerge, threatening the grip the classic defense behemoths once had on the industry.

Investors told Business Insider last year they expected 2024 to be big for defense startups, predicting a defense-tech hype cycle. “It’s clearer than ever that democracies face new threats and that the modern battlefield is changing beyond recognition,” Nathan Benaich, a founder and general partner at Air Street Capital, a firm that says it invests in AI-first technology, told BI at the time.

A handful of tech companies have already won multiple multimillion-dollar contracts from the US military.

“These awards represent a vital step in warfighter adoption of AI, moving cutting-edge technology from experiment to enterprise production,” Shannon Clark, head of defense growth at Palantir, a data analytics company, said earlier this year during an announcement for a lucrative Defense Department contract.

Here’s a look at some of the top tech companies working to disrupt the defense industry.

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