1/ Defense tech has advanced more in the past twenty-four months than in the previous three decades. We’ve identified five frontiers driving innovation in defense and national security. 1️⃣Autonomy moving from concept to combat 2️⃣AI permeating DoW workflows 3️⃣New vectors for advanced manufacturing 4️⃣Edge and network resilience 5️⃣Energy and materials independence. 🧵

8/ The takeaway: national security now runs on startup innovation, and we believe many generational defense tech companies will emerge from this wave. Read the full roadmap: bvp.com/atlas/defense-tech-r…

7/ Frontier 5: Energy and materials independence. China controls ~70% of rare earth production and ~90% of processing. There’s no leadership in AI, defense, or clean energy without first securing the materials that make it possible. This is a prerequisite for sovereignty.

6/ Frontier 4: Edge and network resilience. As adversaries jam, spoof, and intercept, AI-enhanced mesh networks and GPS alternatives are making contested environments survivable. A comms blackout no longer has to mean going dark.

5/ Frontier 3: New vectors for advanced manufacturing. Global conflicts have exposed a structural weakness: the West can't surge munitions and energetics fast enough. Startups are stepping up with low-cost, scalable production, additive manufacturing, DfM interceptors, and more.

4/ Frontier 2: AI permeates DoW workflows, in the backoffice and also the mission-critical. The plumbing has matured and the models have caught up, so AI can now slot into real workflows, handle the messy inputs teams actually work with, and produce outputs that drive decisions.

3/ Frontier 1: Autonomy moves from concept to combat. In early 2024, autonomous systems were still largely experimental. Now they're helping define battlefield outcomes worldwide, with a new generation of Neoprimes, from @anduriltech to Saronic, scaling across every domain.

2/Why now? Multiple transformational forces are both converging and amplifying each other. 🔹 Procurement reform speeds deployment. 🔹 Early wins pull in AI talent that once avoided defense. 🔹Geopolitical threats drive budgets. 🔹 Rising budgets validate public markets, drawing in more capital and founders.

7️⃣The robotics companies that win the next decade may be the ones focused on building the best integrations. "What I see missing is the ability to rapidly integrate and deploy mass-customized systems...We're a lot closer in our ability to do that today than we ever have been." Full article on Atlas: bvp.com/atlas/seven-lessons-…

6️⃣Every robotics company is paying the cost of building on models that weren't designed for them. "A lot of companies are building on top of existing things that have not necessarily been built for robotics...There's a lot of companies saying 'let's add data, fine tune it, let's pre-train it.' But it's slowing everybody down."

5️⃣Domain depth and conviction are essential to fundraising efforts. "Nowadays there is enough evidence that applied robotics is viable...[investors] are looking for [a founder] who not only understands the use case but is also a dreamer."

4️⃣The hardest role to fill in applied robotics doesn't have a job description yet. Successful deployments often depend on the people responsible for managing the gap between the lab and the real world. Navigating that gap requires someone who can make judgment calls across research, product, and real-world constraints simultaneously.

3️⃣Don't define your vertical or your stack too early. Place-specific knowledge transfers across use cases in a way raw task capability alone cannot. The longer a robot operates in a specific environment, the more context it accumulates, and this context is difficult for competitors to replicate. Context becomes a moat of defensibility to then expand into new industries/environments.

2️⃣The ecosystem looks meaningfully different now than it did seven years ago. Building full-stack offers the deepest customer proximity, but partnerships are becoming an increasingly viable alternative.

1️⃣Build where buyers are primed to embrace robots. Pick a vertical that faces labor shortages, customer urgency and pain points, including structured, predictable environments and workflows.

How to build robotics businesses set to scale.🧵 Lessons for applied robotics founders building today. Insights from the experts: 🤖 Ury Zhilinsky of Mind Robotics 🤖 Sandy Hefftz of Bellboy Robotics 🤖 Ted Stinson of Covariant 📺youtu.be/hzXeYUdaGbU?si=LxVO…

New @hoh_pod episode is live! @stephenkraus & Halle are breaking down where capital is flowing, big incumbent bets, AI moving from hype to proof, and a quiet public health crisis brewing. Listen to this month's Digital Health Download: bit.ly/4v60Aho