Silicon Valley’s new defense tech ‘neoprimes’ are pulling billions in funding to challenge legacy giants

A question of defence tech startups successful Silicon Valley is drafting billions successful backing and reshaping America's nationalist security.

Anduril Industries, precocious valued astatine $30.5 cardinal pursuing its latest backing round, is among the alleged "neoprimes" — companies challenging the dominance of bequest contractors, dubbed "primes," specified arsenic Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, and RTX (formerly Raytheon).

"There's much wealth than ever going to what we telephone the 'neoprimes'" Jameson Darby, co-founder and manager of autonomy astatine concern syndicate MilVet Angels, oregon MVA, told CNBC. "It's inactive a fraction of the wide budget, but the inclination is each positive."

Other examples of defence tech startups challenging the incumbents see SpaceX and Palantir Technologies, said Darby, who is besides a founding subordinate of the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Unit.

Unlike the primes, these startups are faster, leaner and software-first — with galore of them gathering things that tin assistance adjacent "critical exertion gaps that are truly important to nationalist security," said Ernestine Fu Mak, co-founder of MVA and laminitis of Brave Capital, a task superior firm.

Venture backing for U.S.-based defence tech startups totaled astir $38 cardinal done the archetypal fractional of 2025, and could transcend its 2021 highest if the gait remains changeless for the remainder of the year, according to JPMorgan.

As the planetary warfare scenery changed implicit the past decades, the U.S. Department of Defense has identified several technologies that are captious to nationalist security, including hypersonics, vigor resilience, abstraction technology, integrated sensing and cyber.

"In a post-9/11 world, the full Department of Defense efficaciously focused connected ... the planetary warfare connected terrorism. It was our subject versus insurgents, guerrillas, asymmetric warfare, comparatively low-tech fighters successful astir cases," said Darby.

But warfare contiguous is much focused connected "great powerfulness competition," said Mak.

"The absorption is much connected deterring and competing with [adversaries] successful these precise high-tech, multi-domain conflicts," Mak added. "The battlefield is changing and caller technologies are needed... warfare nary longer being constricted to land, sea, air. There's besides cyber and abstraction domains that person go contested."

Today, immoderate of these Silicon Valley "neoprimes" are processing not conscionable weapons, but besides dual-use technologies that tin beryllium applied some commercially and by militaries.

"So things similar artificial quality and autonomy person broad, sweeping commercialized applications, but they're besides intelligibly a unit multiplier successful a subject context," said Darby. "[The] Department of War is rapidly assessing and adopting these dual-use technologies ... they're sending signals to the concern world, to the defence concern base, that the U.S. authorities needs these things."

That absorption from the authorities has, successful turn, provided a wide and strategical roadmap for some investors and entrepreneurs, said Mak.

On Sept. 17, MVA came retired of stealth mode aft softly backing immoderate starring defence tech startups since 2021.

Today, Mak says the syndicate's astir 250 members see tech founders, Wall Street financiers, institution executives, quality officials, erstwhile subject leaders and Navy SEALs. Together, they've invested successful companies similar Anduril Industries, Shield AI, Hermeus, Ursa Major and Aetherflux.

"Overall, we judge that 'neoprimes' cannot beryllium successful the abstract. They necessitate radical — individuals who bring method expertise, who transportation a heavy consciousness of mission, and who lend complementary voices and talents. Together, this conjugation forms what we are convening and calling the 'new guard,'" said Mak.

She added that modern nationalist information requires some the "warrior's penetration connected the battlefield" and the "builder's thrust for innovation".

"Working unneurotic with engaged, informed patriots whose information strengthens our defence ecosystem and reinforces the precise cloth of nationalist security," Mak said.

Mak and Darby some hold that arsenic caller technologies make and marque their mode onto battlefields globally, it's changing the mode militaries fight, which tin besides airs caller threats.

"You're seeing these technologists, these builders ... gathering defence tech, and the crushed wherefore they're doing so, is not to initiate conflict, but alternatively to make a credible deterrent that discourages aggression," said Mak.

"No 1 successful defence tech is looking to wage war, rather, it's looking to deter it and wanting adversaries to deliberation doubly earlier threatening bid and stability," Mak added.