May 2025 Pulse

May 2025 in brief.

May 2025 is the archive’s high-water mark for activity: 29 events, ≥$6.27B disclosed across 26, and the broadest domain spread of any month (nine of eleven domains active). Motorola Solutions’ $4.4B upfront agreement for Silvus Technologies — tactical MIMO and mesh radios for drones and unmanned systems — was 70% of the dollars and the largest sensing-and-communications deal in the archive. Leidos paid $300M for Kudu Dynamics (AI-enabled cyber), Rocket Lab agreed to buy Geost’s EO/IR payload business for $275M, and Karman added Industrial Solid Propulsion for roughly $60M. On the financing side, CHAOS Industries returned six months after its Series B with a $275M Series C (NEA, Accel); Quantum Systems raised $181.9M (Balderton); Radiant $165M for portable microreactors; X-Bow $105M with Lockheed Martin leading the strategic portion. Below $75M the tape was wide rather than deep: 17 rounds at or under $60M across AI decision support, maritime autonomy, tactical communications, training and acquisition software. Eight of the 29 companies were non-US, led by the UK (Orca AI, Space Forge, Valarian).

Two readings. First, primes and defense-electronics strategics were the marginal buyer this month — Motorola, Leidos, Rocket Lab, Karman, Lockheed, Northrop and RTX Ventures all appear — the tape’s clearest signal that corporate development had caught up with venture. Second, the early cohort is unusually deep: 13 rounds at $36M or less, spread across AI, logistics and sensing, and none of those 13 companies reappears on the tape within the archive window. That is a data point on how long the early-stage defense pipeline takes to mature.

Activity vs each domain’s own baseline.

Each cell is the number of publicly announced deals in that domain and month. Color compares the month with that domain’s own average over the months shown — not a scale shared across domains — so a dark cell in a small domain means “busy for that domain”, not “large in dollars”. Domains with fewer than 12 events in the window are shown in gray without color. Absolute totals across all 24 months are on the archive home.

The archive begins in Sep 2024, so this issue shows 9 of the usual 12 baseline months; averages use the months shown.

Top deals.

Notable undisclosed

• Gastops · F-STRATEGIC · 2025-05-28 · RTX Ventures · SourceCanadian oil debris monitoring / condition-monitoring technology for aerospace and defense platforms.
• Lovelace AI · F-SEED · 2025-05-06 · RRE Ventures · SourceData-fusion AI company targeting defense and commercial sectors.
• TEKEVER · F-GROWTH · 2025-05-06 · Ventura Capital · SourcePortuguese/UK defense UAS company (AR3/AR5) with combat flight hours supporting Ukraine; OVERMATCH UK expansion.

No domain moved outside its normal range.

No domain yet has enough history for a percentage callout. We flag a domain only when its last three months differ from the prior three by 30% or more and it has at least 36 events in the trailing 12 months. Smaller samples stay as raw counts on the heat map; we never quote month-over-month percentages.

Fund closes, programs and other items.

Fund closes, government capital programs and other supply-side items sit here, outside the deal statistics.

May activity by domain.

A full section (narrative and table) for any domain with five or more events this month; a compact list otherwise. Each event has one primary domain: the market the money is buying.

Deal table, method and definitions.

Issue deal table

Method & coverage

Public sources only · Issue window = first public announcement in May 2025 · 29 announced or closed events (F 25 · M 4 · P 0) · Disclosed floor ≥$6.27B across 26 of 29 (10% undisclosed) · Closings of deals first announced in an earlier month are not counted again here · Capital-supply items are sidebar-only and excluded from domain statistics · Heat-map colors use each domain’s own trailing-12-month baseline.

Event codes & terms

About ASC

Abelian Security Council (ASC) gives clients in defense, national security and critical technologies direct, compliant access to the people who researched, designed, built, evaluated, bought, deployed and competed with the systems they are underwriting. Pulse is the public layer of that work: a curated tape of announced financings, acquisitions and listings, compiled from public sources and published monthly. Clients can schedule a call with Owen Davies, ASC’s Chief Executive. Members can apply to join.