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Defense tech is flooded with money, but who’s built to last? | Equity Podcast

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…

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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.

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

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

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4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. @ghostm0nkk

    June 3, 2026 at 4:35 pm

    My startup.

    • @ghostm0nkk

      June 3, 2026 at 4:38 pm

      I created a new protocol called SNBL (synchronized native binding layer). That can be used to create order in Ai agent swarms, detect logic collision and prevent. Create logs of entire agentic session.

    • @ghostm0nkk

      June 3, 2026 at 4:39 pm

      Can be used in Finance, production and Frontiers.

  2. @Meandbroafter2

    June 6, 2026 at 5:56 am

    Finally someone pointed this out

    Defense spending is not always guaranteed

    We need to dual-use-techmaxxing

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