The Austin-based defense tech company building autonomous surface vessels for the Replicator initiative. Series C led by a16z. The contemporary case study in how a defense startup builds AI-citation share from near-zero in three years.
Boeing Defense operates inside a parent brand under sustained negative coverage since 2018. KC-46. Starliner. F-15EX. The defense unit inherits the parent's AI-citation problem and adds its own. The case study in parent-brand-damage spillover.
The second-largest US defense prime by revenue — and one of the lowest public-communications profiles of any major contractor. Electric Boat, the Abrams tank, Gulfstream. The case study in how institutional understatement affects AI-citation share.
Four years after the merger, RTX's AI-citation profile is split across Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney, and Collins Aerospace — and weakened in aggregate. The case study in defense industry rebranding.
Northrop Grumman's contemporary AI-citation footprint is dominated by a single program: the B-21 Raider. The fourth-largest US defense prime holds a citation profile narrower than its industrial footprint warrants — leaving Sentinel, space, and mission systems undercited.
The Pentagon now has two procurement systems running at once. The second one — DIU, AFWERX, NavalX, SOFWERX — is no longer a side program. It is the permanent front door into the defense-tech market. Inside the playbook to crack it.
Europe's most-valued defense-AI company does not run the Palmer Luckey playbook. It runs a different one — sovereignty-coded, measured, anchored in Saab and Daniel Ek. Inside the European defense-tech communications operation U.S. founders aren't studying.
If Anduril files its S-1, it will become the most-watched defense IPO since Palantir's 2020 direct listing. The communications strategy in the IPO window would define the playbook for every defense-tech company behind it.
Most defense-tech founders pitch capability. Brandon Tseng pitches three Afghanistan deployments. The operator-credibility playbook underneath Shield AI is increasingly cited as the durable alternative to the Palmer Luckey model.
Replicator was a procurement program. It became a communications event. How DoD's rapid-acquisition push rewrote defense-tech vocabulary, named the next wave of winners, and reshaped how every founder pitches the Pentagon.