谁在资助国防技术？塑造资本结构的投资者基金层面数据

EMERGING TECH RESEARCHWho’s FundingDefense Tech? Institutional Research Group Ali JavaheriSenior Research Analyst,Emerging Spacesali.javaheri@pitchbook.com Harrison WaldockSenior Data Analystpbinstitutionalresearch@pitchbook.comPublished on April 23, 2026 Fund-level data on the investors shaping the capital stack PitchBook is a Morningstar company providing the most comprehensive, mostaccurate, and hard-to-find data for professionals doing business in the private markets. Contents Key takeaways •Defense tech VC is now a measurable capital category, with 140 verified fundsacross 83 investor families and approximately $25.8 billion raised from 2019through 2025.This note maps the fund-level landscape using PitchBook datasupplemented by manual curation, subsegment tagging, and co-investor clusteranalysis. The ecosystem is structurally distinct from broader VC, but it is not yetfully institutionalized and still requires careful definitional work to study rigorously.The universe spans specialist defense managers, repeat dual-use investors, andoccasional participants, with each playing a different role in the capital stack. •Fundraising scaled rapidly from 2019 to 2023, reset sharply in 2024, and partiallyrecovered in 2025, but the recovery was driven by concentration, not breadth.Annual capital raised climbed from $591.8 million in 2019 to a peak of $7.1 billionin 2023, before dropping to $1.5 billion in 2024. The 2025 rebound to $3.3 billioncame across only nine fund closings, producing a median fund size of $60 millionalongside an average exceeding $407 million. That $347 million mean-mediandivergence is the defining signal of the current cycle: Capital remains available butis flowing to fewer, larger vehicles rather than expanding across the manager base. •The market is structurally barbelled, with proliferating small managers at thebottom and outsized capital concentration at the top.The top five share of annualfundraising reached 54.5% in 2025, and the top two share hit 85.2%, the highestin the dataset. First-time fundraising in 2025 totaled $1.8 billion, but across onlytwo funds, reflecting one or two outsized debut vehicles rather than broad-based,new-manager formation. The 2022 vintage, with nine first-time funds raising$477.6 million, better represents genuine ecosystem expansion at the emergingmanager level. •Aerospace systems and dual-use software & hardware dominate subsegmentexposure, while propulsion & energetics is nearly absent.Aerospace systems isthe primary subsegment for 31.3% of families and touches 43.4% when combinedexposure is measured. Dual-use software & hardware follows at 27.7% primaryand 41% combined. C4ISR & mission software jumps from 4.8% primary to 22.9%combined, confirming it as a widely distributed secondary exposure. Propulsion & energetics, at 1.2% combined coverage, is the most significant technology gap inthe current fund landscape despite its strategic relevance to hypersonics, directedenergy, and advanced propulsion. •Co-investor clustering reveals distinct ecosystem power centers organizedaround stage, subsegment, and institutional affiliation.The Specialist Seed clusteris the broadest by family count (24.1%), reflecting the fragmented early-stagebase. The Thiel-a16z-Lux Growth cluster likely dominates in dollar-weightedterms despite having only 11 families. NatSec Cyber, Space Defense, OSCSBICCT, Eclipse-Narya Frontier, and Defense CVC represent more specialized butstructurally distinct capital groupings. Nearly one-fifth (19.3%) of families do notmap cleanly to any single cluster. •Government adjacency is part of the capital stack, not background context.TheOSC, with $984 million in loan authority, and the SBICCT program projecting a$4 billion-plus deployment through participating funds represents a new form ofgovernment-catalyzed private capital formation. In-Q-Tel (nearly 480 companiesbacked), DIU (more than $4.9 billion in production contracts), AFWERX (more than$710 million in SBIR), NSIN, NavalX, and the Army Applications Lab collectivelyform an ecosystem scaffolding that shapes deal flow, validates technologies,and in some cases, directly co-invests alongside private managers. The NATOInnovation Fund adds an allied-nation dimension. How to use this report •LPs and allocatorsevaluating defense tech exposure can use the defense-tierclassification, co-investor cluster map, and concentration data to benchmarkmanagers, identify white-space opportunities, and assess whether thecategory warrants a dedicated allocation versus opportunistic access throughdual-use platforms. •GPs raising defense-focused fundscan use the fundraising time series,size-bucket data, and experienced/emerging manager split to position theirvehicles relative to the competitive landscape and identify underservedsubsegments where new fund formation is thin. •Defense tech founderscan use the investor-type composition, subsegmentexposure map, and co-investor cluster analysis to target