Top Defense Tech Investors

Defense tech investors back companies building for national security: autonomous systems, space, advanced manufacturing, and the software that runs them. This ranking orders firms by defense-dedicated capital and deal leadership, not by total AUM. Founders Fund sits first. The firm incubated or backed Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX early, and it has written the sector's largest single checks, including roughly $1 billion of Anduril's $2.5 billion round; its two most recent growth funds of $4.6 billion and $6 billion put estimated firm assets above $20 billion. Andreessen Horowitz ranks second through its American Dynamism practice, which runs $1.176 billion in dedicated funds inside a roughly $90 billion platform, per the firm's own figures, and holds Anduril and Shield AI. Lux Capital ranks third at $7 billion under management, with about a third of its portfolio in defense, after closing a record $1.5 billion fund.

The list splits three ways, and the differences matter more than the ordering. Multi-strategy platforms such as General Catalyst, with more than $43 billion under management and an early Anduril position, dwarf the dedicated funds on raw capital but allocate only a slice of it to defense. The pure-plays are smaller and more concentrated: Razor's Edge closed an oversubscribed $560 million Fund IV to push past $1.25 billion in national-security assets, Point72 runs a $400 million Deterrence fund staffed with intelligence-community veterans, and Shield Capital is frequently cited as the top dedicated defense-tech fund. A third group invests for capability rather than returns. In-Q-Tel, the CIA-backed nonprofit, has made more than 750 investments; Lockheed Martin has raised its venture capacity to $1 billion; Booz Allen tripled its fund to $300 million. Because defense allocations inside multi-strategy AUM are rarely disclosed, the figures are not strictly comparable.

Capital formation in the sector has broken records for two straight years. Full-year 2025 defense-tech venture funding reached roughly $49.9 billion across 966 deals, nearly double the prior year and led by autonomous systems, and the first quarter of 2026 alone brought $19.8 billion across 262 deals, more than a third of that full-year total, with late-stage and venture-growth rounds taking 88 percent of the money. Valuations moved just as fast: the median venture-growth pre-money valuation reached $1.4 billion in the first quarter, nearly triple the $500 million median of 2025. By the narrower count of equity funding, US defense-tech startups raised $14.2 billion in 2025, nearly triple the prior year and far ahead of Europe's $2.48 billion, per Defense News. Every firm below links to its Altss profile, which tracks its funds, leadership, and defense positions.