Latest news with #ShieldAI
The Verge
3 days ago
- Automotive
- The Verge
Mark Walter is buying majority ownership of the Lakers at a $10 billion valuation,
LeBron James, combat drones and Slate Auto? reports ESPN. Walter runs TWG Global, which owns chunks of other sports teams, and also owns a fun grab-bag of other companies, including Shield AI and Slate Auto. LeBron-themed pickup truck when?
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Voyager soars 82% on first day of trading as defense tech booms
Voyager Technologies' stock surged 82% on its first trading day. The company plans to use initial public offering funds for research, acquisitions, and debt repayment. Voyager's IPO highlights renewed interest in defense and space tech from investors. Defense tech company Voyager Technologies closed its first day of trading 82% higher than its initial public offering price. Voyager, which provides software for space and defense tech companies, priced its New York Stock Exchange debut at $31 per share on Tuesday. It offered 12.4 million shares and closed at $56.48 per share on Wednesday. Shares continued climbing after hours. Voyager plans to use the cash injection from the offering to fund investment in research and development programs and buy assets needed for growth, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. A portion of the proceeds may also be used to pursue mergers and acquisitions in Voyager's core business areas. The rest will be used for repaying debt and the business's day-to-day needs, the company said. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan jointly led the offering. Early investors in Voyager include national security-focused venture firms Industrious Ventures, Marlinspike, and Scout Ventures. Voyager's IPO is an outlier because most venture-backed companies have preferred to stay private, especially after the pandemic. Like many tech companies that go public, Voyager is unprofitable. Founded in 2019, it's younger than peers like Palantir, which was founded in 2003 and went public in 2020, and Anduril, which was founded in 2017 and remains a private company. Voyager also relies largely on one client: the US government. The company posted $144 million in revenue last year, out of which 80% came from US government work. NASA alone made up 25% of its sales last year. Voyager reported a loss of $66 million in 2024, over double the prior year's loss, according to a regulatory filing. The IPO pop shows a renewed interest in defense and space tech companies from Silicon Valley and Washington alike. In an inaugural speech in January, President Donald Trump said that "We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars." Late last month at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has been bullish on battlefield tech, said that America's military will be equipped with the most advanced capabilities as part of the 2026 fiscal year budget. US military leaders have increasingly prioritized the development of AI capabilities in recent years, and want to build up America's arsenal in the technological arms race with China. They have argued that whichever country dominates this tech space will win future conflicts. Top VCs, including Founder's Fund and Andreessen Horowitz, have been pouring into defense tech darlings like Anduril and Shield AI. In March, Shield AI raised $240 million in a funding round, boosting its valuation to $5.3 billion. Last week, Anduril closed a new funding round of $2.5 billion, a deal that more than doubled the defense startup's valuation to $30.5 billion. Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
12-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Voyager soars 82% on first day of trading as defense tech booms
Defense tech company Voyager Technologies closed its first day of trading 82% higher than its initial public offering price. Voyager, which provides software for space and defense tech companies, priced its New York Stock Exchange debut at $31 per share on Tuesday. It offered 12.4 million shares and closed at $56.48 per share on Wednesday. Shares continued climbing after hours. Voyager plans to use the cash injection from the offering to fund investment in research and development programs and buy assets needed for growth, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. A portion of the proceeds may also be used to pursue mergers and acquisitions in Voyager's core business areas. The rest will be used for repaying debt and the business's day-to-day needs, the company said. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan jointly led the offering. Early investors in Voyager include national security-focused venture firms Industrious Ventures, Marlinspike, and Scout Ventures. Voyager's IPO is an outlier because most venture-backed companies have preferred to stay private, especially after the pandemic. Like many tech companies that go public, Voyager is unprofitable. Founded in 2019, it's younger than peers like Palantir, which was founded in 2003 and went public in 2020, and Anduril, which was founded in 2017 and remains a private company. Voyager also relies largely on one client: the US government. The company posted $144 million in revenue last year, out of which 80% came from US government work. NASA alone made up 25% of its sales last year. Voyager reported a loss of $66 million in 2024, over double the prior year's loss, according to a regulatory filing. The IPO pop shows a renewed interest in defense and space tech companies from Silicon Valley and Washington alike. In an inaugural speech in January, President Donald Trump said that "We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars." Late last month at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has been bullish on battlefield tech, said that America's military will be equipped with the most advanced capabilities as part of the 2026 fiscal year budget. US military leaders have increasingly prioritized the development of AI capabilities in recent years, and want to build up America's arsenal in the technological arms race with China. They have argued that whichever country dominates this tech space will win future conflicts. Top VCs, including Founder's Fund and Andreessen Horowitz, have been pouring into defense tech darlings like Anduril and Shield AI. In March, Shield AI raised $240 million in a funding round, boosting its valuation to $5.3 billion. Last week, Anduril closed a new funding round of $2.5 billion, a deal that more than doubled the defense startup's valuation to $30.5 billion.
CNBC
10-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Anduril tops 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50 list as interest in defense tech rises
This year's Disruptor 50 list, topped by Anduril in the No. 1 spot, and then OpenAI, showcases 50 companies that are challenging the status quo and using technology (most often, AI) to transform a range of industries. What's particularly notable about this year's list is how the sectors represented illustrate key trends not just in technology and VC, but also in politics and society. This is the first time in the 13 years of the Disruptor 50 list that it's been topped by a defense tech company. The defense tech sector isn't just represented by Anduril, with Flock Safety, Saronic Technologies, and Shield AI also making the 2025 list. Their scope and scale demonstrate a rising trend. The four companies have a combined value of more than $45 billion and have raised almost $10 billion from investors. They have geographic diversity – all are headquartered outside Silicon Valley. And their focuses are varied. Flock Safety (No. 7 on this year's list) makes security hardware and software. Saronic (No. 19) builds unmanned maritime vessels. Shield AI (No. 38) is an autonomous drone company. Beyond the companies focused on building physical methods of defense, there is also Abnormal AI (No. 25), a cybersecurity company playing a key role in protecting systems from attacks that prey on human behavioral weaknesses. Gecko Robotics (No. 30) deploys its robots to capture data about the integrity of critical assets, including aircraft carriers, naval ships, and missile silos. The sector's growth is expected to accelerate thanks to a surge of funding. Last week, Anduril announced a new $2.5 billion round of funding at a valuation, $30.5 billion, double the valuation at its previous round of funding. Saronic and Shield AI have also closed major fundraising rounds in 2025, according to Pitchbook, $600 million in Saronic's case. AI infrastructure company Scale AI (No. 28) secured a landmark deal last August with the Department of Defense's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to advance AI capabilities for the U.S. military. Scale AI also announced a new multi-million dollar deal with the DoD in March to help with "Thunderforge," an initiative to develop AI agents for U.S. military planning and operations that also includes this year's Anduril. The surge in funding comes as President Trump has proposed an increase in defense spending, with a focus on modernizing military capabilities and opening opportunities beyond the legacy defense sector. There is also an increasing focus on dual-use technologies: Anduril took over Microsoft's augmented reality headset program that was in the works with the military, and then at the end of May announced a deal with Meta to create VR and AR devices for use by the Army. Along with the rise of military tech, the explosion in generative AI's capabilities is driving the transformation of a range of sectors, from farming to law and robotics. Across the list, there are 17 enterprise tech companies, seven fintechs, four health-care companies, four in food/agriculture, and three each in transportation and biotech. AI-focused investments and higher valuations are on full display up and down this year's Disruptor 50 list. The 13th annual Disruptor 50 class is valued at $798 billion, far more than last year's $436 billion total, due in large part to OpenAI's $300 billion valuation. The total amount the companies have raised increased to $127 billion, up from $70 billion last year. It's clear that the generative AI revolution has transformed the startup ecosystem as well as the list, with 20 newcomers this year. Only 11 companies on this year's list were Disruptors before the launch of ChatGPT, and many in that group — including Anduril, Databricks, and Canva — have succeeded because of their embrace of gen AI. More than two-thirds of companies on this year's D50 list — 38 companies — said that AI is "critical to their business," up from 34 last year. And 21 of this year's companies say generative AI is their essential technology, up from 13 last year. This reflects venture capital's increasing focus on AI: about 58% of global VC dollars invested in the first quarter went into AI and machine learning startups, while in North America, 70% of deal value went into AI and machine learning startups. And the funding numbers continue to grow, with $73 billion raised in the first quarter, more than half of last year's total, though that's largely due to OpenAI's $40 billion round, led by SoftBank. AI is being used in a range of diverse use cases by Disruptors, including law (Harvey), fighting crime (Flock Safety), and in the doctor's office (Abridge and Rad AI). But the sector with the most companies on this year's Disruptor 50 list is enterprise AI, with 17 companies (up from 14 last year). These range from Databricks, which helps companies mine their data, to Glean, which enables its customers to build custom AI apps and custom search tools, to collaborative workspace and note-taking tool Notion. Design platform Canva has increasingly invested in AI and made AI features the center of its toolkit. With partnerships with ChatGPT and Anthropic (No. 4 on this year's list), and the acquisition of several AI-powered companies in the past year, CEO Melanie Perkins is expected to take her $32 billion company public in the next year. "We've continuously been investing in this space with magic recommendations, and so forth, over the years with generative AI," said Perkins. "Being able to have that magic embedded as you're writing your documents and your presentations, being able to have Canva AI … it's really been an extension of that initial promise that we've had to customers, to empower the world, to design, to continue to put the latest to greatest technology in their hands." Perkins says Canva has a three-pronged approach to AI: integrating the best products that are available, deeply investing in the areas needed to bring the expertise to their customers, and having a platform where the newest AI products and other apps can come onto Canva and be accessed by the community. She is optimistic about the potential for AI to be a democratizing force for Canva's 220 million customers around the world. "I think it's critically important that as the world of humanity, we use AI to truly lift up every single person who lives here, to help everyone have their basic human needs being met," she said. "And I think there is a huge opportunity for us to be dreaming bigger about what we want with technology accelerating. I think there is a huge opportunity to rethink what we're doing with it and ensuring that it's serving our needs."
CNBC
10-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
38. Shield AI
Founders: Ryan Tseng, Brandon Tseng, Andrew ReiterCEO: Gary SteeleLaunched: 2015Headquarters: San Diego, CaliforniaFunding: $1.2 billionValuation: $5.3 billionKey Technologies: Artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, edge computing, machine learning, roboticsIndustry: DefensePrevious appearances on Disruptor 50 list: 0 Shield AI could change the way warfare is conducted by enabling autonomous AI systems to fly drones and aircraft. Shield AI's core technology, called Hivemind, is an AI pilot software. Shield AI has deployed it in drones, including the V-BAT, which has been used in the Russia-Ukraine war, and Nova quadcopters. Hivemind has also been tested in fighter jets. The key advantage of such systems is that they can operate in areas where there is no communication or GPS, including on the battlefield. In Ukraine, for instance, the V-BAT has been used for long-range missions like targeting Russian surface-to-air missiles. "Hivemind is an homage to one of my favorite video games – StarCraft. It's a sci-fi real-time strategy game. Hivemind is self-driving technology for aircraft," Shield AI co-founder Brandon Tseng said in an interview with The War Zone. Pilotless fighter planes no longer seem a pipedream. But in the near future, Shield AI is most likely to establish a sales pipeline among defense companies that require battlefield or advanced intelligence and reconnaissance. Drones are especially good at that. A former Navy Seal, Tseng founded Shield AI with his brother, Ryan, an entrepreneur. Autonomy expert Andrew Reiter joined as co-founder. In May 2025, Shield AI named a new CEO, tech entrepreneur Gary Steele, who had formerly led analytics company Splunk before selling it to Cisco. Steele has experience in enterprise sales and partnerships. Shield is one of several companies bringing AI and autonomy into warfare to make the 2025 Disruptor 50 list, including the much larger company Anduril, this year's No. 1 Disruptor. Shield AI is backed by a16z, Riot Ventures and the US Innovative Technology Fund. AI technology in warfare raises concerns among ethicists, who question whether the decisions to use lethal force should be made in contexts where humans cannot intervene. Shield AI has responded by pointing out that recent advances in autonomous warfare are part of a continuum that began with unguided bombs. "Wishing these algorithmic capabilities away in the name of ensuring more human control is akin to removing the laser guidance kit from a Hellfire missile and demanding that the pilot provide all the aiming – the operator's toolkit is just poorer, and civilians are likely to pay the price," the company wrote in a blog post. Shield AI has established a recent trio of important partnerships and expanded its global presence. In December, it partnered with defense giant Palantir Technologies to integrate its Hivemind system with Palantir's operating system, which in turn enables other defense contractors to produce arms, faster. Last November, Shield AI partnered with Indian conglomerate JSW Group to establish a facility in India for V-BAT manufacturing. And last May, Shield AI expanded into Australia through its acquisition of Sentient Vision Systems, opening a new office in Melbourne.
