Palantir, Shield AI, and "American Dynamism"
Shield AI's $5B valuation and Palantir's strategic investment signal a fundamental shift in Silicon Valley's focus - from disrupting apps to rebuilding American industrial capability
“China’s military is Netflix; the U.S. military is Blockbuster. China is Amazon; the U.S. is Barnes & Noble. China is Tesla; the U.S. is General Motors. People thought the automotive industry could not be disrupted and that Ford, GM and Toyota had preordained rights to be the leaders for the next thousand years. Automotive executives mocked and balked at the idea an outsider could do what they do. They spent billions on research and development; they allocated billions in resources and thousands of people to their products and capabilities. Yet here we are today, after less than a decade: Tesla is a $1T company; it had dethroned the incumbents”
This quote can be found on the home page of autonomy and defense company Shield AI’s website. It’s inflammatory. It’s supposed to be.
Shield AI, along with a slew of other startups and investors, is addressing a need in the market that’s becoming increasingly relevant: technology that protects America’s national interests, deters conflict, reinforces American industrialization, and positions us to continue being a highly competitive influence on the geopolitical international stage.
Recently, it’s been revealed that Palantir is in advanced talks to participate in an upcoming funding round of ShieldAI for $200M at a valuation of $5B. Today, we’ll be taking a closer look at this partnership, Shield AI’s offering, and what this example, plus other funding data, tells us about the emerging focus on “American Dynamism”.
Shield AI
Shield AI was founded in 2015 by former Navy Seal Brandon Tseng, his serial entrepreneur brother Ryan Tseng, and perception/navigation engineering wiz Andrew Reiter.
The company specializes in unmanned, autonomous systems for Defense applications. Its current clientele list includes the Ukrainian and United States governments, the U.S. Special Operations Command, the USAF, the USMC, the US Navy, and several allied international militaries.
Product Suite
Shield AI’s foundational product is HiveMind, a fully autonomous aircraft pilot that can read and react to changing battlefield conditions in real-time — without relying on GPS, marked waypoints, or external comms tools. Their systems are trained in synthetic, physics-modeled environments combined with human-machine tactics and behaviors, leveraging a suite of proprietary sensors and cameras to create a reliable world-view and map that informs the aircraft on how to react, read, and respond to changing environments.
The significance of HiveMind's GPS-independent operation cannot be overstated. In modern warfare, GPS denial is a common tactic - Russia has actively demonstrated this in Ukraine. By operating without GPS dependency, Shield AI's systems maintain effectiveness in contested environments where traditional autonomous systems would fail.
HiveMind is offered as an SDK, allowing companies to rapidly implement autonomy into their hardware by providing reference architectures, autonomy libraries, and simulation/testing/analysis tools. Using this SDK, and in partnership with DARPA’s ACE program, ShieldAI “took over” an F-16 and X-62 Vista earlier this year, enabling it to carry out fully autonomous dogfighting and mission-specific capabilities. (Spoiler: it beat the human 5-0)...
In another, quite frankly remarkable feat, ShieldAI successfully went from project beginning to live flight on a Kratos Firejet in just 120 days, exemplifying their speed of implementation and proficiency in platform flexibility.
In addition to the software, ShieldAI is manufacturing several proprietary vehicles with HiveMind pre-built in, including:
V-Bat
A VTOL drone revolving around a patented ducted fan design that increases thrust by over 80% at an equivalent engine power of competitors. The V-Bat is edge-enabled, running off NVIDIA Orin GPUs, and will be used to create swarms of unmanned aircraft to carry out specific missions like "find, tag, kill"1, and “missile sponge”2 missions.
Nova-2
A small-scale quadcopter drone used for tactical indoor room clearing, surveillance, and reconnaissance. It was named as the “most mission capable indoor drone” in the world built for indoor room clearing by joint US and Israeli forces.
Palantir’s Involvement
In December, Shield AI announced that they’d be expanding work with Palantir Technologies, a leading provider of AI systems, to develop and deliver large-scale command and control of autonomous uncrewed systems.
ShieldAI will receive prioritized access to Palantir’s operation Warp Speed, their proprietary manufacturing OS that provides an adaptable platform providing the speed, flexibility, and security required for the modern manufacturer.
Along with Shield AI, Palantir is providing Warp Speed to several companies working to bolster American defense and manufacturing efforts, including Anduril Industries, L3Harris, and Panasonic Energy of North America. Currently, ShieldAI is using warp speed to improve the speed of iteration and manufacturing of the V-Bat, for which they’ve received record demand.
Now, as of last week, Palantir is in advanced discussions to invest in Shield AI’s upcoming $200M round.
Why This is Important
Here’s my take on it. Palantir's activities within Warp Speed, and this investment, can be judged as an example of where the overall market may be headed — not just in Defense, but in Energy, Infrastructure, Manufacturing, and other critical areas important to national security and public safety.
The investment in ShieldAI is part of a broader, focused, intentional investment strategy for Palantir. The company has disclosed holdings in various companies, with a recent portfolio value calculated to be $9,719,645. Top holdings include:
Surf Air Mobility Inc. - a company redefining American air travel and electrification of transport
Rubicon Technologies, Inc. - a company redefining American waste management
MSP RECOVERY INC - a company redefining American Healthcare payment recovery
What do these have in common?
They represent a shift towards American manufacturing, energy, defense, and critical infrastructure development.
It’s not surprising, in my opinion. The global threat of conflict is rising, and there is a growing narrative that increasing tech enablement across critical industries relevant to American protectionism may be necessary to combat adversarial entities.
Supporting Data
This is a graph of total capital deployed into American drone companies by year.
What do you notice?
Let’s dive deeper. Of the approximately 1200 American startups that fall into this category, 272 (~23%) operated at the intersection of drone tech and Defense.
Look at this spike in deal count for those companies.
Interesting…
What about companies working to redefine American manufacturing through tech-enabled solutions?
Hmmm.
There’s a trend shaping here, and you don’t need to take my word for it. On A16z’s 2025 “requests” for startups, one of the few mentioned categories “American Dynamism” (see below). You can read more in the hyperlink.
What does this suggest?
The shift we're seeing isn't just about defense technology. It's about rebuilding American industrial capability, national security, and infrastructure from first principles.
Shield AI and Palantir's partnership represents one example of a much broader trend: Silicon Valley is turning its attention to foundational infrastructure.
While the last decade of startup funding may have focused on consumer apps and enterprise SaaS, this new wave is taking on the hard problems. Defense tech, domestic manufacturing, energy independence, supply chain resilience, the space economy… areas that were previously left to aging incumbents or were thought of as “too risky” are now attracting both startup talent and venture dollars.
The implications are significant. Silicon Valley's next chapter might not be defined by social networks or food delivery apps but by companies rebuilding American industrial and technological superiority. In this context, a $5B valuation for Shield AI isn't just a bet on autonomous systems - it's an early indicator of where smart money sees the future of American technology heading.
The market data tells the story. VC investment in American Dynamism is accelerating. Shield AI might be today's headline, but they're just the beginning.
For a final example of market traction, here’s a list of several early-stage companies operating within Manufacturing or Defense that raised Angel/Pre-seed/Seed/Early Stage rounds in 2024.
Defense
Delta Black: Hybrid VTOL drone with 28+ hour endurance
General Hypersonics: On-demand, reusable hypersonic launch systems for rapid payload delivery
Guardian RF: AI-powered systems for real-time detection and tracking of drones and their operators
Swarmer: AI-powered autonomy solutions for coordinated UAV operations
DarkHive: Rapidly deployable, short-range tactical drone designed for indoor and outdoor threat assessment
ZeroMark: AI-enabled auto-targeting fire control systems
Primordial Labs: Natural language interface enabling intuitive control of uncrewed systems
Firestorm Labs: Modular, 3D-printed unmanned aerial systems (UAS) designed for rapid production and mission adaptability
HavocAI: End-to-end maritime autonomy solutions
Gambit: Platform-agnostic AI solutions for scalable, autonomous unmanned systems
Manufacturing/American (Re) Industrialization
AIM: Retrofits existing heavy equipment to operate autonomously
Eagle Electronics: American manufacturer specializing in cellular modules
SirenOpt: Revolutionizes manufacturing by enabling real-time, non-destructive materials analysis
Deterrence: Autonomous manufacturing for critical energetic defense components
Bedrock: Develops and manufactures active materials for sodium-ion batteries
Fabri: Accelerates manufacturing with rapid, on-demand casting production
Fortius Metals: Enhances manufacturing with stronger, lightweight metal fabrication.
One group identifies target, next spots it with a laser, final drops a payload onto target.
Draw expensive enemy fire (i.e., LTA missiles) towards low-cost V-Bats to expend enemy munitions, let more expensive and equipped jets follow once initial munitions are depleted.