a16z's Connor Love: Private capital is rewriting the Pentagon's defense procurement playbook
a16z · x · 2026-11-02
Connor Love of a16z's American Dynamism team draws on his Army service to critique traditional defense procurement: the buyer isn't the user, appropriators are far removed from frontline needs, and primes 'develop the thing after you give me the money,' leaving soldiers with systems designed a decade ago. He argues venture capital is changing that by pre-funding startups building to today's tech level ahead of government demand signals—delivering soldiers products that actually shift the battlefield and aid deterrence. He calls this private-capital-first model unprecedented in defense history.
More from Companies & People
- Tom Davenport questions WEF's AI-work-2030 scenarios: what about the present? — luisdans · 2026-11-02
- Bezos tells Musk to price Grok subscription at $500 with per-token overage — beffjezos · 2026-11-02
- Nous Research desktop app overhaul: instant gateway switching and auto-reconnect land this week — Teknium · 2026-11-02
- Jim Cramer warns bears are trying to derail Anthropic's IPO — Polymarket · 2026-11-02
- OpenAI may rebrand its data centers as 'AI compute campuses' — TechCrunch AI · 2026-11-02
- Karpathy: my arXiv tool was too much work, alphaXiv is the one to use — vhanagwal · 2026-11-02