Last year, Crunchbase News reported that legal tech startup investment was riding high as investor enthusiasm for AI reshaped legal software funding, citing a Goldman Sachs report estimating that 44% of legal work could eventually be automated. That concentration has helped create one of the clearer success stories in legal AI ' and may also be obscuring an adjacent market that remains far less developed. EvenUp has raised $370 million, Eve $164 million, Supio $85 million, and Darrow $63 million, for a combined total of roughly $682 million. Plaintiff-focused companies account for about 71% of disclosed capital for legal AI, suggesting investors have found a part of the sector where adoption, workflow clarity and venture-scale narratives already line up. That investor interest is not difficult to understand. Plaintiff firms tend to share more standardized workflows around client intake, case evaluation, medical review and demand generation ' all areas where AI can automate repetitive work and improve throughput. As those firms have adopted software, the category has become easier to understand, distribute and fund....

How times have changed. Already this year, more than $14.6 billion in venture investment has gone into companies in Crunchbase's military, national security and law enforcement categories, blowing past the sector's previous annual record of $9.6 billion raised in all of 2025. Investors have poured billions into startups developing AI-powered military systems, autonomous vehicles, defense software and space technologies, and they're writing increasingly large checks to do it, Crunchbase data shows. Global defense tech funding totaled $1.6 billion in 2020 before climbing to $3.9 billion in 2021, Crunchbase data shows. Funding then remained relatively steady between roughly $2.8 billion and $3.8 billion from 2022 through 2024. Deal flow has stayed steadier, mirroring a broader trend of venture capital concentration. So far this year, defense tech startups have announced 107 venture rounds, Crunchbase data shows, putting 2026's pace slightly ahead of the 206 deals done in 2025. The Costa Mesa, California-based company announced a $5 billion Series H last month, a deal that valued it at $30.5 billion and further cemented its status as the most valuable venture-backed defense startup in the world....

Mach Industries, the three-year-old defense tech startup run by 22-year-old founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, has raised a $300 million Series C at a $1.8 billion valuation, the company announced on Monday. The raise nearly quadruples the valuation of the company in a year. In June 2025, Mach raised $100 million at a $470 million valuation. Other investors include Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Khosla Ventures. Since building autonomous weapons is a capital-intensive industry, Thornton began actively fundraising a couple of months ago, he told TechCrunch, and quickly discovered that the round would be popular with investors. 'We went out to raise 200 [million dollars] and we were extremely oversubscribed at 200 and happy with the price, so we decided to push up to 300. We're still oversubscribed at the 300 mark,' Thornton said of the fundraising efforts. Founded in 2023, Mach and its growth have been a wild ride for Thornton, who famously dropped out of MIT at 19 to start the company. VC enthusiasm is high for a few reasons. Other than AI, defense tech is a hot area for investment right now as newfangled autonomous weapons and drone defense systems prove themselves in battle in Ukraine....

AI and software continue to draw the biggest share of startup investment, but most of the interesting companies that caught our eye in the past month were working on problems in the physical world, often far from the glow of a laptop screen. They include a defense-tech startup that aims to bring manufacturing closer to the frontlines, a company working to recycle valuable raw materials from defunct solar panels at industrial scale, and a startup that wants to produce cell-based milk for the dairy supply chain. Let's take a look. How times have changed. Already this year, $13.6 billion in venture investment has gone into companies in Crunchbase's military, national security and law enforcement categories ' more than 1.5x last year's annual total. Firestorm Labs is one of the latest defense startups to get some of that funding, with an approach that aims to bring manufacturing closer to the battlefield. The San Diego-based startup last month announced an $82 million Series B led by Washington Harbour Partners....