Top Defense Startups in 2024

Backed by top-tier Silicon Valley VC funds, Shield AI established itself as the leader in AI for aviation. Shield AI has been named to Forbes’ AI 50 and Best Startups lists, CB Insights Top 100 AI Companies, and Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. Our mission is to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. We're hiring! Visit shield.ai/careers to learn more.

Vannevar Labs builds software for the country's most critical national security problems. We are uniquely qualified to succeed in this $740B market; our founders have 30 years of combined experience across national security, government sales and CIA, In-Q-Tel, DoD/JSOC, Harvard, and Stanford. We're supported by a number of VCs, including Felicis, DFJ Growth, Point72, Costanoa, and General Catalyst, amongst others. We believe our military service members and intelligence officers deserve access to the best technology American innovation can offer, and we are building great products for this mission. If you're someone who wants to work with conscientious people on things that matter, we'd love to hear from you!

Nominal is a venture-backed company with offices in Los Angeles, Austin, and New York City that specializes in software and data management products for organizations that are testing and validating complex physical systems (like drones, planes, rockets, engines, satellites, nuclear reactors, etc.). We are backed by prolific and experienced venture capital firms like Founders Fund, Lux Capital, XYZ, Haystack, Human Capital, BoxGroup, etc., and have raised significant venture funding with strong early traction in both commercial aerospace as well as defense applications with the Department of Defense (DoD). The Nominal team comes from commercial companies like SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Lockheed Martin, and NASA and is active amongst customers in aerospace, defense, industrial, and advanced energy applications (autonomous aviation, eVTOL/VTOL, flight testing, satellite development, etc.). We are also building and delivering solutions to the United States Air Force (USAF) and are looking to expand use cases across the broader DoD test community. Our product is a data visualization and computation platform designed to accelerate how engineering teams test and validate hardware systems. We specifically aim to shorten the data review process after running tests and helping engineering organizations scale testing campaigns more efficiently and effectively to save time and lower costs. It works by combining heterogeneous data into runs and allowing users to easily build custom visualization and analysis. Users write test logic with interactive computation, and these checks can be applied to historical and future runs to compound learnings. Data sources can include telemetry, sensor data, logs, simulations, and other testing metadata like environment, vehicle, part, version, etc.

We have six main products that utilize Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to do everything from making Renewable Energy more efficient to helping Drones navigate urban air traffic, to predicting catastrophic events, to cybersecurity, to the latest Defense Department initiatives.

Lazarus Forms is a developer-friendly API that uses A.I. to extract key-value pairs as JSONs from any fax, form, or PDF. Handwriting compatible, and requiring no training, the Forms tool automates data entry tasks and enriches old databases, saving you time and effort.

At Improbable, we believe that simulations as large and complex as the real world are the next fundamental breakthrough technology. Like in the real world, objects in these simulations will change in response to their environment, and their interactions will combine to form massive, complex systems. We are building the platform to make these simulations possible. New worlds for gaming and entertainment can now be created using our product, SpatialOS. Our technology creates permanent, persistent and engaging experiences: worlds where your actions really matter. The same technology that makes imaginary worlds feel real can also illuminate complex systems at work in reality. We use insight acquired through simulation to solve real world problems. You can find out more about our technology on our website - improbable.io

Our team combines seasoned aerospace engineering talent and Special Operations combat veterans to address 21st century threats. We embrace the best practices from Silicon Valley innovation such as agile development and deliver breakthroughs in high-power microwave for offensive and defensive EMP and artificial intelligence for enhanced targeting capabilities.

The biggest waste in manufacturing today is not on the shop floor. It's in the meetings, emails, and data transfer that overwhelm knowledge processes (eg quality assurance, vendor management, engineering, R&D, and sales). That's because traditional enterprise tools split collaboration and processes into disparate systems, resulting in up to 85% of time and effort being wasted. Unifize solves this problem by bringing collaboration and process into one place. By creating a conversation for every process record, Unifize measurably reduces waste in knowledge processes by up to 95%.

Rhombus is a Silicon Valley startup and NASA Research Park partner. We are leaders in bringing big-data insights to Enterprise planning and decision-making at strategic, operational and tactical levels. Our advisory board includes two Nobel Laureates and a Draper Prize winner. We choose to solve pressing problems in National Security and Energy sectors using cutting edge cross-disciplinary approaches. Are you ready to help the US win the AI race?