Squadra News: Shift5 secures $99M Army contract, Primordial Labs partners with GDLS

This year’s AUSA conference was packed wall-to-wall. Army leadership, program officers, startup companies, technologists and investors converged, the new defense tech crowd alongside the primes. 

Of the some 100 startups on the expo floor, we were proud to have four of our portfolio companies represented. Shift5, Primordial Labs, Aurelius Systems, and Overwatch Imaging exhibited among partners including Boeing, L3Harris, American Rheinmetall, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics Land Systems, Anduril and Northrop Grumman.

For the last four years we’ve made an effort to bring together customers, operators, new friends, old friends, collaborators and founders at our annual AUSA social. This year was our biggest yet. To every single one of the 400 people that came through, thank you for spending time with us, and for demonstrating the spirit of collaboration in the national security technology community.

There’s one other thing that made the week at AUSA particularly special for the Squadra team. With experience at SpaceX AI, Goldman Sachs, as a startup co-founder, and as a military intelligence officer with the US Army, Dakota Robinson joined our investment team as Senior Associate.

Please help us in extending him a warm welcome! 

In this edition you will find: 

📰 Latest from Ukraine in First Breakfast

🏆 Awards and recognitions across the portfolio 

🇺🇸 Announcements made at AUSA 

Company News to Celebrate

Shift5 secured a $99M contract to further support the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control. The five-year contract expands the company’s role from a prototyping partner to critical component in the Army’s force-wide initiative to modernize into a unified ecosystem. Joining other commercial partners Anduril, Palantir, Air, and Rune, Shift5 will unlock operational data from NGC2 platforms and deliver near real-time visibility through mission-critical alerts and continuous data streams. Read more in Tectonic.

Primordial Labs and General Dynamics Land Systems announced a master teaming agreement to bring natural language command and control to their portfolio of ground combat vehicles. From the M1 tank to the next-generation XM30, Primordial’s platform-agnostic AI voice-control system will support the transformation of combat vehicles into AI-enabled teammates and deliver human‑machine collaboration. Read more in Breaking Defense. 

Aurelius Systems's autonomous counter-drone laser system stole the show at AUSA, mounted centerstage on an American Rheinmetall unmanned ground vehicle. The partnership between the two companies creates what they describe as protection for autonomous logistics missions. Read more on Defence Blog. 

Overwatch Imaging CEO Greg Davis was interviewed in the AI & Tech Brief, Washington Post’s daily newsletter covering the power dynamics shaping artificial intelligence in Washington and Silicon Valley. Discussing the applications of AI in the drone industry, Davis details how Overwatch has leveraged advanced processors to deliver AI-enhanced imagery intelligence to mission operators as they happen. Read more in the Washington Post. 

Network Highlights to Share

Unmanned Forces as a Service: A retrospective on their most recent travels in Ukraine, Dan Madden and Dom Ventimiglia co-authored an article for defense tech publication First Breakfast. Sharing their experience from an underground bunker sit-down with leadership of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, they examine the effects of what changes when militaries organize, train, and equip around unmanned warfare and what this means for the Department of War. Read the article in First Breakfast. 

Big Time Turbine Debut: Volund Manufacturing showed off their VT-100 testing units for the first time at the Air Force Innovation Expo in Tucson, AZ. The engine delivers 100 pounds-force of thrust and is specifically engineered for attritable munitions. See the photos on LinkedIn. 

This Should Be In a Museum: PDW’s C100 UAS tactical drone has earned its place in US Army Aviation history. Fielded with Army units supporting reconnaissance, navigation, communications, signal detection, and resupply missions around the world, the C100 is now on display at the Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker, AL. Check out the recap on LinkedIn. 

When Everything is Agentic: Agentic AI has quickly become a ubiquitous term, but much of what is marketed with the moniker is simply AI. In this article by Tidal Cyber Senior Director of AI Harrison Van Riper, he explains the issues caused when the line is blurred between systems that analyze and recommend and systems that independently decide and act. Read the article in Dark Reading. 

Don’t Believe Claude Over the Humans: Anyone and everyone can set up a data dashboard, that doesn’t mean it’s anywhere near the facts. Datalogz CEO Logan Havern took on this challenge on the Experiencing Data podcast, explaining why the company’s semantic intelligence platform fixes the data behind AI, ensuring deep data integrity enterprises can actually trust. Listen to the podcast. 

Breaking Through the Cyber Noise: Nudge was named Cybersecurity Startup of the Year by this year’s CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards. Recognizing the industry leadership of the company, this independent award recognizes the best and brightest companies in the information security industry. Read more on LinkedIn. 

Air Traffic Control, this is Spectrum: Airbase CEO Ari Rosner was a panelist at an event for airspace modernization leaders hosted by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Federal Aviation Administration. The conversation recognized the coordination challenges of spectrum modernization needed to keep people safe and critical services up and running. Check out the recap on LinkedIn. 

Open Roles Across the Squad

🐸 Primordial Labs is hiring a Model-Based Systems Engineer to capture how all of the data flows, components, hardware, interfaces, and partner technologies fit together with Anura, building the technical ground truth for the entire company. Location: Remote

✈️ Overwatch Imaging is hiring a Director of Strategic Growth to develop go-to-market partnerships with sensor OEMs, aircraft integrators, software providers, and complementary technologies, driving distribution and long-term strategy. Location: Hood River, OR

🚤 UFORCE is hiring a Head of Sales, US ARMY to build an Army account and capture strategy that converts customer needs into qualified, fundable, winnable opportunities, developing trusted relationships across Army echelons and mission sets. Location: Washington, DC

💥 Aurelius Systems is hiring a Senior Manager, Defense Programs to lead customer engagement and execution across government and industry programs, owning commitments from award through demo, delivery, and operational fielding. Location: San Francisco, CA 

🛡️ Shift5 is hiring a Director of Government Affairs to lead federal legislative and regulatory advocacy, directly engaging Capitol Hill and executive agencies while strategically managing external lobbying and government relations firms to drive policy. Location: Arlington, VA

📡 Airbase is hiring an Infrastructure & DevSecOps Engineer to scale their platform backbone, securing and hardening data systems that handle fragmented, high-stakes datasets, and building the core of modern spectrum infrastructure. Location: New York, NY

Up Next this Month

Securing Space and SOCOM — 11/3-5: Sicura will be exhibiting at the Patrick Tech Expo in Cocoa Beach, FL on November 3 and at the MacDill Tech Expo in Tampa, FL on November 5. CTO Kendall Moore will deliver a briefing on "Delivering Continuous ATO with Security Control Management” detailing how his experience at NSA with the Authorization to Operate process led to the development of Sicura. Their software platform bridges the gap between security and engineering teams, while automating remediation of compliance drift. These annual events are open to all military, federal, and community partners. Register with Federal Direct Access. 

Transatlantic Convening in Krakow — 11/9-12: Dan Madden is headed to Poland to participate in the Transatlantic Defense Industry Access Forum, a curated program focused on connecting US aerospace and defense companies with senior NATO, government, military and industry leadership across Europe. This year’s event focuses on unmanned systems, counter-UAS, and deep precision strike capabilities. Learn more from USNATO.

Forecast on the Future — 11/19: The third annual Axios Future of Defense Summit will be hosted in Washington, DC. The conference will take on conversations with military, policy, industry, venture, and technology leaders addressing not only the ongoing conflicts changing warfare across land, air, sea, space, and cyber, but predictions on how the by then revealed political changes will affect national security spending, policy, and culture. Register with Axios. 

Final Look from the Field

Endolith’s team of industry leading scientists hosted the documentary series Bloomberg Primer for a special episode to answer the question “Can Microbes Solve the Copper Problem?” From their perspective, they already have. 

“The best place to find copper is where we already have copper,” said CEO Liz Dennett. Using living microbe communities, Endolith’s biomining solution can increase recovery, extracting more copper out of existing mines. 

Partnered with major mining companies including BHP and Rio Tinto, Endolith is working on proof of concept of their technology. 

Watch the full episode on Bloomberg Primer or read the accompanying article on Bloomberg. 

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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