Andreessen Horowitz leads $95 million Series B for Hivemind Aerospace as defense investors concentrate on low-cost autonomy

Hivemind Aerospace, an Austin company building autonomous swarming software and low-cost airframes, raised a $95 million Series B on Monday led by Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism practice with participation from Founders Fund and Lockheed Martin Ventures. The deal lands as U.S. defense buyers redirect spending toward attritable autonomous systems, a category that Pentagon leaders intend to deploy in large numbers under Replicator.

The timing matters because Replicator set expectations for thousands of fielded systems on a short clock, and contracting pathways have begun to formalize for software defined autonomy that can ride on commercial airframes. Investors are concentrating capital in companies that can deliver unit economics suitable for scale and integration into programs of record.

How the round will be used Hivemind said it will expand flight testing at Western ranges, stand up a second assembly line in Texas, and harden its autonomy stack for contested environments. The company sells a Block 2 fixed wing platform built from commercial components and a software license that enables multi-vehicle teaming and target handoff.

Management disclosed bill of materials of about $90,000 per airframe and a sale price near $140,000, with a recurring software fee around $25,000 per unit per year. Hardware gross margins are in the 30 to 40 percent range, according to the company, while software margins are materially higher. Early pilots with U.S. services and two NATO allies converted to paid evaluations, and the company cited low churn across deployments of fewer than 100 vehicles.

Investor calculus and competitive set Andreessen Horowitz’s check signals continued appetite for dual use autonomy where software drives differentiation and defensibility. Founders Fund has been active across defense with portfolio exposure in aerial systems, and corporate venture from primes remains a route to integration and channel access.

The sector is competitive. Shield AI, Anduril, Skydio, RapidFlight, and Kratos each pursue parts of the attritable and autonomous stack. Hivemind’s case rests on open architectures, field data pipelines, and cost discipline that can survive procurement cycles and price pressures.

For the broader tech landscape, Monday’s deal underscores how venture capital is rebalancing from pure software applications toward compute, power, and national security infrastructure. As more capital targets hard tech with real unit economics, startups face a higher bar on deployment evidence and margins, which is likely to shape how AI and robotics companies position products across civilian and defense markets.