Squadra News: Primordial Labs partners with Rheinmetall, PDW and Overwatch Imaging announce major site expansions
Portfolio companies flock to DC in September for events and engagements, ready for a packed fall season.
There’s no slowing down in the summer for the squad. Teams across the portfolio took advantage of the good weather to get their people together across the country for onsites and customer engagements.
Overwatch welcomed new team members for their annual BBQ in Hood River, OR. Primordial Labs combined a customer-fly day with team-building in Aurora, CO. Shift5 brought all of their engineers together for their annual Engineering Week at HQ in Arlington, VA. UFORCE assembled their US team for the first time at Squadra’s offices in Washington, DC. Copia Automation will take their entire team to New Orleans, LA for their all-hands offsite later this month.
With the relentless pace startup leaders and their teams endure, there’s nothing more important than taking the time to invest in the most valuable resources of all — their people.
Consider this your go-to snapshot of what's happening this month and how to engage.
In this edition you will find:
📈 Partnerships with primes
✨ Product milestones and successful demos
🚀 Party in the AUSA
Company News to Celebrate
Primordial Labs has partnered with American Rheinmetall, Harbinger, and Forterra, on an 18-month U.S. Army contract to deliver autonomous, hybrid-powered uncrewed ground vehicles for Army logistics. Primordial’s technology will enable the integrated solution to command robotic systems using natural language. Read more in Tectonic.
Falcomm was recognized by senior leadership at Global Foundries for the company’s GaNdalph.ai, an AI design tool built with first-class support for RFGaN1. The platform offers significant acceleration of production at scale through rapid power amplifier design and deployment. Read more from Global Foundries.
Nudge CEO Russell Spitler was interviewed in an article on the rampant truth of the invisible AI agents and the new enterprise security risks they create. Read more in TechNewsWorld.
UFORCE CEO Oleg Rogynskyy was included among Washingtonian Magazine’s leading defense technology innovators, recognizing key businesspeople, policymakers, and others shaping the future of national security. Read more in Washingtonian Magazine.
NetRise was profiled in Cyber Defense Magazine’s Black Hat edition, recognizing how the company’s products Turbine and Provenance address both the reactive and proactive side of firmware-level supply-chain defense. Read more in Cyber Defense Magazine.
PDW participated in the Iron Sting Precision Mortar Test and Evaluation Event in support of USASOC, Special Operations Forces, and employed an LTD-equipped C100 to enable accurate strikes on targets more than 1.5 kilometers beyond the standard maximum range of a 120 mm non-rifled mortar. This event continued to demonstrate the progress of the company’s laser target designation capabilities through continuous testing alongside military operators. Read the case study.
Network Highlights to Share
Overwatch Imaging announced plans to open a new office in Nashville to meet growing demand in the defense and tactical intelligence landscape. This will be the company’s second location, complementing its headquarters in Hood River, OR, which will also continue to grow. The new office is focused on accelerating development of the company's Automated Sensor Operator software, through deeper access to talent and proximity to defense, law enforcement, and technology partners. Read the press release.
PDW is expanding with new locations in Denver and Boston. The Boston office brings together software, autonomy, electrical, mechanical, and systems engineering to advance PDW’s next generation of drones and robotic systems. The Denver office provides a dedicated environment for advanced development, rapid prototyping, and collaboration across aircraft, software, communications, and mission systems. Read the press release.
Endolith CEO Liz Dennett was featured on The Green Blueprint, a podcast about architecting the clean energy economy. In the conversation Dennett discusses the copper recovery problem and how microbial biology is the solution to this climate tech challenge. Listen to the podcast.
Squadra Principal Dan Madden joined Beth Kroman of Bloomberg Beta and Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness Veronica Daigle of RedCell Partners for a discussion at the 5th annual AI for Defense Summit. The group discussed the role of investors and public-private partnership in driving rapid transition of AI and autonomous solutions to the warfighter. Read more on LinkedIn.
Shift5 published an analysis of the company’s technology applications in fleet-wide predictive maintenance. Written by Director of Data Services David Maisson, the article defines how the company leverages operational data to bolster mission readiness across platforms. Read the article.
Open Roles Across the Squad
🔥 Volund Manufacturing is hiring a Turbine Engineer Designer to own the mechanical engine designs from clean sheet to production, support test rig designs and work closely with the manufacturing team. Location: Huntington Beach, CA
🛰️ Airbase is hiring a Full Stack Engineer to architect and build an end-to-end API-first data layer that will enable seamless integration with modern autonomous systems and legacy government databases. Location: New York, NY
🤖 Copia Automation is hiring a Revenue Operations Lead to architect the foundation for go-to-market motion, create essential operational processes, sales decision-support, and build AI-powered workflows. Location: New York, NY
🐸 Primordial Labs is hiring a Machine Learning Engineer to own the models that make natural language work at the tactical edge, speech recognition, natural language understanding, and the full path from candidate approach to a trained, hardened model, reliable on constrained compute. Location: Remote
🍋 Citra Space is hiring a Mechanical Design Engineer to own the development of ruggedized, deployable mechanical systems for space domain awareness sensors, taking designs from initial concept through deployment. Location: Colorado Springs, CO
Up Next this Month
Cyber Guardrails for the AI Era — 9/9: Join us after-hours during the Billington Cybersecurity Summit for a fireside chat and innovation panel discussion at the intersection of AI and cyber. Managing Partner Guy Filippelli will sit down with Sean Coyne, Special Adviser to the Director at CISA, and startup leaders will share their take on data governance, compliance, and interoperability that will make or break cybersecurity in the AI era. Register on Luma.
Meet Deep Tech in DC at the Startup Crawl — 9/10: One part science fair, one part bar crawl, one part scavenger hunt, one part networking event. Squadra’s proud to host the official Deep Tech Week Washington Startup Crawl. Join us to meet over 30 companies operating in energy, aerospace, biotech, quantum, robotics, materials, defense, and cyber, including portfolio companies Shift5, Aurelius, SysGit, and Overwatch Imaging. Register on Luma.
Celebrate Deep Tech in SoCal — 9/17: Volund is hosting the closing party for SoCal Deep Tech Week, a week-long run of programming across Long Beach exploring the companies and technologies aiming to scale American manufacturing. Register on Luma.
Decision Intelligence World Tour — 9/17-24: Datalogz is taking the show on the road to , visiting customers and providing opportunities to see their analytics ops platform live. Connect with the team in Hyderabad (Sept 17-18), Mumbai (Sept 21-22), and Bengaluru (Sept 23-24). Learn more on LinkedIn.
Defend the Perimeter — 9/16: Cyber and OT professionals spend their days defending networks, PLCs, and critical infrastructure. What’s that have to do with jiu-jitsu? Defense! Join Copia Automation for an MMA class that will teach you to use elite defense thinking on and off the clock. Register online.
Party in the AUSA — 10/13: Calling all founders, funders, and friends in cyber and national security headed to AUSA 2026! Back for the 4th year in row, join us for our annual all-squad celebration. Our team will be there in force alongside our portfolio companies and ready to kick-off a great week. Register on Luma.
Final Look from the Field
RF spectrum access is a persistent bottleneck across government, military, and commercial sectors. Spectrum demand has grown exponentially, but spectrum itself is a finite resource, and coordination processes and regulations haven't kept pace. Airbase is building the modern licensing and coordination platform to fix that built for both regulators and applicants.
Airbase took its platform to Fort Carson for live-data testing as part of a broader DIU-linked effort supporting Drone Dominance, the DoW's $1B program to rapidly field lethal small drones. As the program scales, reliable and rapid spectrum access is becoming a critical dependency for operational success. The team validated several product capabilities with real data and received very positive feedback, underscoring the role spectrum coordination plays in getting critical systems fielded.
Airbase's spectrum supportability work extends beyond defense systems. Spectrum underpins daily life and critical infrastructure from Wi-Fi and GPS to cellular, broadcasting, satellite comms and much more.
Squadra Ventures is a venture capital firm led by founder-operators that invests in early-stage national security companies advancing the critical edge.
Grounded in the belief that success is a combination of people, product, and planning, the Squadra team provides transformational support to startup leaders in the complex dual-use technology ecosystem. By applying a growth-stage mindset at the seed stage and a commitment to building alongside entrepreneurs, Squadra empowers extraordinary teams to win and leave a lasting positive impact on the world.
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