Forward Deployed Venture Capital

Mission-critical venture capital: defense, energy, industrials, and artificial intelligence

[Forward Deployed Venture Capital @forward_deploy]

🔊 Turn those headphones up... this one hits! Excited to announce that we’ve raised a $45M Fund 2 for mission-critical startups!

[Mark Scianna @markscianna]

I’m thrilled to share that @forward_deploy has raised a $45M Fund 2 for mission-critical startups! We’re backed by the Palantir Mafia: a motley crew of 150+ operators, hackers, designers, spies, machine learning scientists, classification experts, government contracting officers, nuclear engineers, and founders.

Also participating: AngelList Systematic Fund, @BainCapVC, Dauntless Ventures, @garrytan, GREE LP Fund, @invariantes, @MultipleCapital, Norton Holdings, and two undisclosed large institutions 🏦🏦.

We invest in startups modernizing critical American industries including defense, energy, and manufacturing — the core infrastructure that underpins our national prosperity. It’s true that “software is eating the world”, but these trillion dollar markets have had relatively little innovation. It’s time. 🇺🇸

We invest in talent mafias such as Palantir, Anduril, and SpaceX where we have strong relationships and high conviction in the people and culture. We've seen what extreme talent, velocity, and determination can achieve.

Born from Palantir’s Forward Deployed Engineering culture, we back hardcore founders that move fast and run through walls to achieve their missions. We run with them and accelerate their momentum.

Huge thanks to the founders and LPs who’ve given us their time, trust, and partnership. We’re fired up to build the future with you.

🔊 Turn your headphones up, this hits hard!

Let’s go! 🚀

[Ultra @UltraSecurityHQ]

Hello World 👋

Ultra Security is out of stealth with $10M in seed funding to secure autonomous systems.

Ultra puts enforceable boundaries around autonomous systems without slowing down the work they're built to do. We've built guardrails, governance, observability, and anomaly detection in one platform.

Agents aren't predictable. Security should be.

[Forward Deployed Venture Capital @forward_deploy]

Excited for this team and proud to support their important work. Go @Arda_Industries!

[Arda Industries @Arda_Industries]

A big day for our team. We’re excited to share what we’ve been building: AI for manufacturing engineering, already deployed at @anduriltech.

More from our co-founder and CEO, @bobmcgrewai, below.

[Ryan McGuire @r_mcguire]

@dylanmcguir3 and I just raised a $7.5M pre-seed led by @a16z to build a robotic surgeon @alephsurgery

Much of the early investment in Physical AI has focused on industries where labor is relatively abundant and low-cost. We believe the biggest opportunities to change the world lie at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Surgery is among the most valuable forms of labor on the planet, but it's far too scarce and expensive - due to an exceptionally long training pipeline and highly concentrated expertise.

We’re building the first surgeon that scales: one system that can acquire, refine, and transfer surgical skills across millions of procedures. v1 is already learning to perform surgical tasks autonomously from demonstrations, and improve from its own experience.

Lots of great folks behind us! @BoxGroup, Reveille VC, Constellation, @forward_deploy, @Valkyrie_vc, @DiscipulusVent, @maniacvc + more

[Forward Deployed Venture Capital @forward_deploy]

Proud to back @StonePowerUS, America's Turbine Company

[Dylan Morris @Dylan_Morri]

The US needs 1.5 terawatts of new power by 2035.

AI has scaled beyond our ability to build power and the existing power supply chain is the bottleneck

The future demands a new kind of hardware company, building a new kind of Turbine

Introducing: Stone Power @StonePowerUS
🧵1/11

[Forward Deployed Venture Capital @forward_deploy]

Congratulations to @CapeCellular on securing a $100M Series C!

John and Nick spent years at Palantir seeing how cellular networks are exploited by adversaries, and founded a company to fix it. Cape doesn't collect your name, your SSN, or your location.

[Forward Deployed Venture Capital @forward_deploy]

February may be the shortest month of the year, but that didn't stop it from being one of the most action-packed months we've ever seen! Here are some of the awesome updates:

💰 We invested in 3 new stealth startups.

🛡️ @chariotdefense raised $34M in their Series A.

📱 @CapeCellular launched Secondary Numbers, giving folks the option to add additional lines for things like retail, or spam-heavy alerts. Additionally, all compatible devices now support Secure Global Roaming.

🚁 @paladindrones announced their NDAA-compliant drone, KNIGHTHAWK 2.0.

🔐 @PropelAuth now has MCP support, allowing authentication management for your MCP servers.

📊 @AthenaIntell unveiled a number of new features, including one in Sheets called Deep Citations – think footnotes for spreadsheets with clickable links to source materials.

⚛️ @oklo Inc was selected by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy as one of five US companies to develop recycling of used nuclear fuel.

🎖️ Rune became the only company on BOTH of the Army's Next Generation Command and Control prototype efforts, when they joined Anduril's NGC2 prototyping team.

📡 The Compression Company announced their $3.4M Seed. They're using AI-driven, onboard satellite compression to transmit data from earth observation satellites, without requiring new hardware.

🛰️ @TurionSpace deorbited their first satellite after 2.5 years in service, having completed 15,698 orbits around Earth, 1,022 tasking collects, and 26,467 images.

🤖 @SolveAI_Inc came out of stealth and announced their $50M in funding. Their platform allows non-technical users to build software applications using natural language prompts.

🚀 @Castelion was awarded a $49.9M contract with the US Navy to accelerate the development and testing of their Blackbeard hypersonic weapon.

Lastly, we are wrapping up the month with a West Coast tour, complete with visits to some of our portfolio companies, conversations with some fellow VCs, meetups with a few new founders we're really excited about, and 3 Palantir alumni events. More to come on this in a future update.

A huge congrats to all the teams — across the board! With momentum like this, we can't wait to see what March has in store.

[Forward Deployed Venture Capital @forward_deploy]

We're thrilled for the @SolveAI_Inc team, who came out of stealth and announced $50M in funding.

Their platform allows non-technical users to build enterprise software applications using natural language. We're proud to partner with them and can't wait to watch them soar!

[SolveAI @SolveAI_Inc]

SolveAI at your service 🤵

[Forward Deployed Venture Capital @forward_deploy]

Huge congratulations to Chariot Defense on their $34M Series A!

They have incredible traction and are set to revolutionize how our armed forces generate and manage power. We're proud to back such an awesome team and mission!

[Chariot Defense @chariotdefense]

Chariot just raised our $34M Series A, led by @a16z , to scale command of power on the battlefield.

With this round, bringing total funding to $41M, we are:
- Boosting production of our Amphora 24 and Amphora 400 products
- Initiating an operating system for command, control & distribution of power
- Expanding the team that will define this next-generation infrastructure

The round was joined by existing investors @generalcatalyst and @xyz_vc with other new participation by @DCVC, LMNT Ventures, @MarlinspikeVC, Overmatch Ventures, @ShieldCapVC , @ensemblevc, and Trenches Capital.

In under a year, Chariot moved from stealth to revenue and from prototype to force-on-force exercises. Amphora systems are now supporting U.S. Army units, DIU, and commercial customers who recognize that resilient power underpins autonomy, sensing, strike, and C2.

The future of defense will be shaped by energy, speed, and adaptability. We are defining the power backbone that makes that future possible and ensure power is never the limiting factor in modern warfare.

If you are building or supporting technologies at the edge of high-voltage systems, advanced batteries, embedded software, or distributed architectures — join us.

[Forward Deployed Venture Capital @forward_deploy]

@medra_ai is reshaping how scientific discoveries are made. Congrats on the Series A!

[Forward Deployed Venture Capital @forward_deploy]

@jaltma You can just tag us next time

[Forward Deployed Venture Capital @forward_deploy]

A huge congratulations to the entire team @method_security on securing $26 million in combined Seed and Series A funding! We're proud to back this incredible team, working on one of the most important national-security problems of the decade.

[Method Security @method_security]

Method is building autonomous cyber systems for the U.S. Government and critical enterprises.

America is facing perpetual cyber conflict. With AI accelerating the speed and scale of attacks, U.S. cyber operators need new capabilities to stay ahead.

Method is delivering those capabilities.

We are building the command-and-control layer for autonomous cyber operations. Our products fuse offensive and defensive capabilities into a full-spectrum platform, enabling security teams to achieve true visibility, challenge their estates, and outpace their adversaries.

Today, Method is deployed across the Defense Department, U.S. Federal Government, and Fortune 500.

We've raised $26M from @a16z, @generalcatalyst, @blackstone and others. This funding accelerates our mission to equip the security teams defending what matters most.

[Mark Scianna @markscianna]

Had a great chat with @tectonicdefense about @forward_deploy Fund II, including:
🔧 Our focus on mission-critical startups
🚀 The rise of the Palantir Mafia
🤝 Making bets on the homies
💸 My first angel check, Palantir in 2009
👥 Our unique LP base of 150+ operators
🏦 Bringing on three institutional backers, including @BainCapVC

[Mark Scianna @markscianna]

Big thanks to @lizette_chapman and @Bloomberg for covering our story and our new fund for mission-critical startups!

(gift url in reply)

[Forward Deployed Venture Capital @forward_deploy]

@tectonicdefense @PalantirTech @anduriltech @SpaceX Ready to back mission-critical startups. Appreciate the coverage, @tectonicdefense.

[Signature Block @signatureblock_]

Forward Deployed VC
GP: @markscianna

Mark is the General Partner at Forward Deployed VC focused on backing mission-driven engineers modernizing America’s industrial base. Previously, he was a founding member of Palantir’s defense team.

[Mark Scianna @markscianna]

The results suggest I'm getting better at this. In 2015 I started doing fewer but larger angel investments. If I filter investments 2015-2021, 18 investments: 97th percentile 😮