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At Andreessen Horowitz’s latest American Dynamism summit, Hadrian founder and CEO Chris Energy painted an image of the nation in peril. “I’m right here to speak to you about an existential danger to the way forward for the Republic and the way Hadrian is attempting to resolve it,” he began.
His phrases – a mixture of rationalism and Marcus Aurelius – weren’t misplaced on the occasion, which introduced collectively a mix of buyers, founders, policymakers and different Washington officers to debate points going through the nation. A notable variety of talks had been associated to protection and nationwide safety, according to the American Dynamism crew’s funding portfolio, which incorporates bets on protection tech startups like Hadrian, Anduril and Defend AI.
Just some years in the past, many buyers thought that slicing a verify for a defense-first startup was a proposition that merely didn’t make sense. The tides have clearly shifted: a16z is one among many companies that’s taken a stronger curiosity in protection and nationwide safety. PitchBook data helps this warming to protection tech. From January to October final yr, VC-backed companies injected $7 billion into aerospace and protection corporations, an enormous progress that stands in sharp distinction to the relative sluggishness in different sectors. Some offers in latest months embrace Anduril’s $1.4 billion Collection E; Defend AI’s $225 million Series E; and Vannevar Labs’ $75 million Collection B.
There are numerous causes for this uptick in curiosity in protection tech, however driving all of them is a brand new, realist imaginative and prescient that’s unfold amongst some technologists and enterprise capitalists. It sees international antagonisms threatening the soundness of Pax Americana; it sees the USA rotting from the within out because of bloat and lethargy. Consequently, the Silicon Valley mentality has returned to its protection roots, embracing the position that venture-funded startups can play in sustaining America’s army dominance and technological supremacy around the globe.
“If you happen to consider in democracy, democracy calls for a sword,” a16z common companion David Ulevitch stated in a latest interview with TechCrunch. And Silicon Valley might be the place it’s solid.
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