There you have it. Rivet Industries — a Palantir alum — just raised $57.5 million to build AI-pow…
April 4, 2026 · 0 likes · 0 comments
Defense Cybersecurity
There you have it. Rivet Industries — a Palantir alum — just raised $57.5 million to build AI-powered wearables for the warfighter.
That's not a defense contractor. That's a startup. Moving fast. Building real things.
And that's exactly how it should work.
I spent years in the Pentagon watching legacy primes take 5 years and $500 million to deliver systems that didn't work. Meanwhile companies like Anduril, Palantir, Big Bear, Shield AI, and now Rivet are building the future of warfare in 18 months with commercial capital.
But here's the problem nobody wants to say out loud.
One Anduril is not enough. Five isn't enough. We need dozens of these companies — across every domain, every capability gap, every branch of service. AI-powered wearables. Autonomous logistics. Predictive maintenance. Cyber offense. Edge computing. Every one of these is a startup waiting to be funded.
The legacy industrial base — Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop — will not save us. They are structurally incapable of moving at the speed of relevance. Their incentive is cost-plus contracts, not battlefield outcomes.
COTS over GOTS. Every time. Without exception.
The DoW needs to stop treating startups as a nice-to-have supplement to the primes. They ARE the industrial base now. Fund them. Contract them. Scale them.
One Anduril won't win the next war.
We need an army of them.
That's not a defense contractor. That's a startup. Moving fast. Building real things.
And that's exactly how it should work.
I spent years in the Pentagon watching legacy primes take 5 years and $500 million to deliver systems that didn't work. Meanwhile companies like Anduril, Palantir, Big Bear, Shield AI, and now Rivet are building the future of warfare in 18 months with commercial capital.
But here's the problem nobody wants to say out loud.
One Anduril is not enough. Five isn't enough. We need dozens of these companies — across every domain, every capability gap, every branch of service. AI-powered wearables. Autonomous logistics. Predictive maintenance. Cyber offense. Edge computing. Every one of these is a startup waiting to be funded.
The legacy industrial base — Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop — will not save us. They are structurally incapable of moving at the speed of relevance. Their incentive is cost-plus contracts, not battlefield outcomes.
COTS over GOTS. Every time. Without exception.
The DoW needs to stop treating startups as a nice-to-have supplement to the primes. They ARE the industrial base now. Fund them. Contract them. Scale them.
One Anduril won't win the next war.
We need an army of them.