A16z Funds More War Drones for its Startup Military
Skydio, one of the anchor companies in the venture capitalist build-out of automated warfare and its own startup military, just raised another big round of funding from A16Z. This round totalled $230 million in funding and that brings the total amount to $570 million dollars. The release notes that it is now used by “every branch of the U.S. Department of Defense”. Axon (formerly Taser), an existing partner, kicked money into the round too. For new listeners, a $250ish mm round is pretty common when you are dealing with a VC cornerstone company; I.e. one they hope to turn into the leader of the startup formation going after an entire sector. So we are looking at a major effort by venture capitalists going into the creation and dominance of this company.
The silence around this announcement particularly from the “DEI” crowd in tech shows how far these warfare startups have been able to get without any public comment; almost no one has heard of this fucking thing and it is already the biggest US drone manufacturer and employs 1,500 people. Skydio is the “sole platform for the U.S. Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance Program.” They’ve actually been growing like a weed while the rest of the tech industry incurs serious layoffs; the war category it seems has remained unscathed.
Skydio also has some new product updates that have basically enabled fully remote operation of the drones (no operator needed on site) and made progress on flight BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight).
Core products in their portfolio focus on Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) for the, checks notes, “battlespace”. Notably they offer training and field services, speaking to previous points I’ve made about tech “workers” now being deployed directly into warfare — I.e. how Palmer Luckey was on the ground in Ukraine gleefully “killing Russians” early in the start of the war. His war startup, Anduril, is heavily backed by a16z and Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund. Regardless of your personal feelings about the war I think we can all agree that seeing Silicon Valley psychopaths showing up in active conflict zones is not a step forward for humanity.
During this conflict, Skydio has “donated” “more than $300,000 in drones and training services to Ukraine in the wake of Russia's invasion.” Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp, who also went to work in Ukraine immediately, has bragged about how quickly they were able to get into gear there as well as how they… didn’t “even ask” for money up front.
Which just makes me think about a future where these companies provide predatory loans for instant weapons deployment and staffing in destabilized conflict zones.
Whee!!!
Ukraine has been a true boon for these VCs in which it really got to test its readiness to deploy into a conflict situation with their own personnel, and as a constellation of startups with the same backers yet different functions, and be effective and be active and be killing very quickly.
The major companies involved in this:
Anduril (funded by a16z and Founder’s Fund)
Skydio (funded by a16z)
Starlink from SpaceX (funded by a16z and Founder’s Fund)
Palantir (started/funded by Founder’s Fund)
I told you it’s a conspiracy!!!
(The Skylink situation I think highlights the fact that though SpaceX isn’t considered a weapons company, it should be: space endeavors are inextricably linked to war and always have been. Space endeavors have always been part of the war machine and where they are distinguished, they are in constant and primary dialogue and partnership.)
The other boon from the Ukraine war was just for the sentiment of public opinion and the ability to use this opportunity to kick the startup military into high-profile action without any push back. A16z and Founder’s Fund are literally on the war path but would have been potentially facing nominally anti-war liberal backlash during a first major deployment. In this situation what are deeply odious companies with fascist founders and weapons of violence, dominance and destruction, are swept up in the tide of goodwill towards Ukraine.
As supposedly anti-war liberals cheered the deployment of military support, a monster crawled up on the beach un-noticed.
So the war in Ukraine has definitely marked a shift in American and tech worker attitudes in general (how quickly that happened!!), and opened a window for an aggressively hawkish agenda to slip in. They are taking advantage and ramping up as we speak, this war landing the new $230 million at Skydio’s door.
As the Skydio release states, “Escalating geo-political tensions have sharpened the need for secure, trustworthy drones to serve critical infrastructure, public safety, and defense customers.”
We see so clearly here how the economic ties of the war machine end up with incredible rewards for weapons builders… where there is war, their business booms. They need war. Venture capitalists have put the entire technology ecosystem in the position of needing war to sustain it and so VCs can get their returns; and this has been a very small conspiracy of people that are driving this agenda within the industry, in which the vast majority of the other people and companies would rather not, you know,
kill people.
Venture capitalists particularly with the war in Ukraine have been very histrionic, for real or show we’ll never know, about potential “escalations” in conflict with China and Russia. This is one of of the primary excuses with a16z + Founder’s Fund behind the creation of an entire startup military: we need to fight the Russian and Chinese threat.
This fucking shit again? And there’s a space race?
Great.
Skydio is only one of the companies involved in this. More insight on this build-out can be found throughout my blog and in this article where we walk through a16z and Founder Fund’s vision for a new startup military and new age of autonomous warfare.
We have to stop these people. This is an incredibly dangerous and rapidly escalating existential threat. It is absolutely foolish to continue to critically analyze crypto, the metaverse, etc. without also considering this part of the picture. They are all related. Palmer Luckey of Anduril founded Oculus which was bought by Meta and which is now the basis of the metaverse. And guess who funded all three of those entities?
You got it babe.