Private capital for drones and autonomy is running ahead of enacted US defense budget authority.
Tekever raised $580M on Sept 23 at a $6.4B valuation, with no revenue disclosed. Defense startups raised a record $14.6B by early June, against $9.6B for all of 2025, per Crunchbase.
Budget authority has not caught up. The government runs on a continuing resolution into December. The FY27 NDAA is stalled in the Senate and the supplemental is not enacted. Adoption is real: officials said on Sept 22 that Maven passed 100,000 users, up from about 50,000 in January.
The layer moving is capital, with operator behavior second. The governing signal is Capital Flood. The test is whether full-year appropriations fund the autonomy lines.
The enacted FY27 defense appropriation or omnibus includes at least $25B explicitly for autonomous and drone systems.
