One Mission, Two Markets: Leading in Dual-Use Tech
21 May 2025 - A Weekly Publication by New North Ventures
NatSecEDGE Conference: Securing America’s Technological Advantage
At New North Ventures, we recognize that America's technological advantage requires deliberate cultivation through strategic partnerships and principled investment. The NatSecEDGE Conference represents a crucial convergence point where visionary leaders across the defense innovation ecosystem align their efforts to address emerging threats and seize technological opportunities.
Hosted by The Cipher Brief in Austin, Texas on 5-6 June, this gathering focuses on frontier domains including AI, Space, Quantum, and Critical Infrastructure protection. These fields represent both our nation's greatest vulnerabilities and its most promising avenues for maintaining strategic superiority.
New North Ventures' support and participation underscore our commitment to fostering public-private collaboration that accelerates dual-use innovations. Our team looks forward to engaging with decision-makers who share our mission of strengthening national security while creating commercial value through transformative technologies.
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Join us at NatSecEDGE as we advance the critical mission of protecting democracy through principled innovation and investment. Together, we will shape the technological frontier that safeguards our nation's future.
The Revenue Balancing Act: Navigating Dual-Use Markets
The next wave of transformative technology companies won't simply choose between government and commercial markets—they'll conquer both. At New North Ventures, we see the revenue balancing act not as a challenge, but as the strategic differentiator that separates category-defining companies from the rest. While conventional wisdom might push founders to focus exclusively on commercial scale, visionary leaders understand that disciplined navigation between government and private sectors creates unparalleled national resilience and asymmetric advantage in global competition.
While there are several paths to success, there is one clear evolutionary pattern - start by strategically harnessing government funding to drive core R&D, then leverage that technological edge to accelerate commercial adoption. This isn't merely sequential—it's symbiotic. The most sophisticated dual-use founders design their technology stack with this duality encoded in its DNA: flexible security architectures, modular deployment capabilities, and clearly delineated boundaries between classified and commercial implementations.
What are key indicators that you have crossed the dual-use Rubicon? Our analysis reveals four critical inflection points - commercial revenue begins outpacing government contracts; product usage expands beyond initial government use cases; sales cycles compress dramatically; and executive bandwidth shifts decisively toward commercial market expansion. These aren't just metrics—they're confirmation that you've unlocked the force-multiplier effect of dual-market penetration.
Our operational expertise points to five sectors with powerful tailwinds for dual-use technology dominance — AI-powered decision acceleration systems, next-generation cybersecurity platforms, sovereign space technologies, advanced manufacturing capabilities, and biosecurity infrastructure. Forward-looking founders in these domains should calibrate their radar to detect procurement reform initiatives, pattern-match shifting VC investment theses, and monitor talent migrations—all leading indicators of emerging dual-use opportunities.
For founders navigating this landscape, leverage government grants and contracts strategically to fund core R&D, build commercial runway before significant scaling, design flexible architecture from day one, hire teams with cross-sector experience, and create metrics reflecting dual-market progress.
The coming decade will witness the complete dissolution of the artificial barrier between defense and commercial technology markets. The most valuable companies will be architected from inception for this convergence, led by founders with hybrid expertise who leverage increasingly streamlined procurement vehicles. This is the future we're investing in—where technological strength and economic resilience become indistinguishable from national security. The winners won't just navigate dual markets—they'll redefine global competition itself.
DoD working on cyber ‘warfighter scorecards’ for COCOMs’ weapons systems
PRO RATA — The Pentagon is creating cybersecurity assessment tools to evaluate weapons systems vulnerabilities within combatant commands. Led by David McKeown, these "warfighter scorecards" will help servicemembers understand mission-critical cyber risks in their weapons platforms. The initiative aims to help warfighters practice operating when critical cyber components are compromised, requiring them to "decompose" their missions to determine operational capabilities during cyber attacks.
NNV Perspective — This represents a strategic innovation inflection point in how DoD approaches cyber resilience. Moving beyond theoretical zero-trust architectures (targeted for 2035), these scorecards create an asymmetric advantage by integrating cyber vulnerability awareness directly into operational planning. Defense contractors developing dual-use technologies must now design for this operational reality — creating modular architectures that can sustain mission effectiveness even when key components are compromised by adversaries.
Saildrone Is Bringing Maritime Defense To Europe Next
PRO RATA — Maritime autonomy leader Saildrone has secured $60 million in financing led by Denmark's Export and Investment Fund (EIFO) to establish a European headquarters in Copenhagen. The company will deploy its first four Saildrone Voyagers in the Baltic Sea in June 2025 under contract with the Danish Armed Forces. These 10-meter unmanned surface vehicles deliver persistent maritime domain awareness with sophisticated sensors and AI algorithms for both surface and subsea monitoring — crucial for protecting critical infrastructure in increasingly contested European waters.
NNV Perspective — Saildrone exemplifies the ideal dual-use technology trajectory we've identified — starting in research and climate missions then effectively leveraging government partnerships (USN and Danish military) to drive mission-critical R&D while simultaneously accelerating commercial adoption across multiple NATO markets. Their modular payload architecture supports research, classified defense and commercial applications, creating powerful tailwinds in the maritime security sector. This European expansion signals they've successfully crossed the dual-use Rubicon, with commercial opportunities now driving their strategic growth in the global competition for maritime domain awareness.
More links to explore:
Space Force official: Commercial satellites can do a lot more than we thought
Navy to brief industry on plans for new robotic ship program
Founded: 2023
Key People: CEO Robert DeMillo
Elevator Pitch: Developer of a solar-powered data processing platform designed to alleviate the constraints faced by terrestrial data centers. The company offers proprietary thermal load balancing hardware and software, enabling defense and emergency responders to access near-real-time data processing in space, delivering faster results without latency issues.
Funding: The company raised $3.5 million of seed funding from Gaingels, Unlock Venture Partners, and Mandala Space Ventures on 19 May 2025.
In this special edition of the Securing Our Future podcast, we share highlights from a recent New North Ventures webinar exploring the rise of dual-use technologies. Co-Founder and General Partner Jeremy Hitchcock is joined by NNV colleagues and The Council on Global Competition and Innovation’s Christina Alfonso to discuss how innovation in AI, quantum, and biotech is shaping the future of national security—and why private capital plays a critical role.
