Defense tech is red hot right now. Anduril and Mach Industries just doubled and quadrupled their valuations, respectively, and the U.S. government is proposing a 40% increase in defense budget. A wave of new startups is chasing those government contracts, but according to Ross Fubini, the venture investor who wrote Anduril’s first check, most of them will get lost in the Valley of Death between prototype contract and real production deal.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan asks Fubini — the founder and managing partner of XYZ Venture Capital, built on the Palantir alumni network and now approaching $2B AUM — what separates the survivors from the rest.
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:11 XYZ VC’s Palantir roots, Anduril investment, and the defense investing thesis
09:25 Ukraine, Iran, and real-time battlefield testing of startups
17:59 The global shift: sovereign defense tech & decoupling from the US
23:29 The dual-use dilemma & how startups should structure GTM
34:35 Manufacturing, govtech, and beyond weapons systems
36:25 Outro
