Profluent, Cradle, and Latent Labs have raised $347M combined to build frontier AI models that design proteins from scratch. The thesis: protein engineering is becoming a platform industry, and software-infrastructure investors are betting it follows the same playbook as cloud computing.
Ground Station as a Service is evolving from a niche space-industry utility into an institutional-grade infrastructure asset class — mirroring the towerco model that reshaped global telecom.
AFRL awarded Palladyne AI a $4.2M contract for HANGTIME — extending SwarmOS into orbit to coordinate satellites, drones, ships, and ground assets as a single AI-native autonomous network across four domains.
$1.1 billion. That is what 23 startups have raised to automate cell therapy manufacturing. Now DARPA is pushing autonomous biomanufacturing for defence, and the two trends are converging. Cellares, Ori Biotech, Multiply Labs, and Streamline Bio are racing to build the factory of the future.
L3Harris and Shield AI completed the first live flight test of an autonomous electronic warfare ecosystem. AI detected, analyzed, and responded to electromagnetic threats without human intervention on a live range.
DARPA's MASH program aims to deploy autonomous robots that find and stop internal bleeding on the battlefield without a surgeon. Phase 1 technical work begins summer 2026 with a $32.4 million budget, targeting a 48-hour pre-hospital stabilization window.
97% of space assets fly without insurance. ORBITInsure launched Warren AI in June 2026, the first AI-native underwriting engine for orbital assets, targeting a $4.06B market that traditional insurers cannot price at scale.
Defence prime contractors and defence-tech startups are acquiring robotics companies at an accelerating rate, with $27.6B in robotics VC in 2025 and the exit path shifting from IPO to strategic acquisition.