{"id":61056,"date":"2018-06-06T20:42:41","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T20:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/06\/06\/lockheed-martin-sees-an-appetite-for-startup-investments\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:34:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:34:49","slug":"lockheed-martin-sees-an-appetite-for-startup-investments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/industry\/2018\/06\/06\/lockheed-martin-sees-an-appetite-for-startup-investments\/","title":{"rendered":"Lockheed Martin sees an appetite for startup investments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Google may be backing away from future Pentagon contracts<\/a>, but defense companies are finding a receptive audience in Silicon Valley startups, the head of Lockheed Martin\u2019s venture fund<\/a> said Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Moran had spent about 30 years of his career in Silicon Valley before taking over Lockheed\u2019s venture fund<\/a> in June 2016. So naturally he felt \u201ca little trepidation\u201d about moving into the defense sector, he told a group of reporters at June 6 roundtable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlmost from the outset, I was pleasantly surprised by the embracement from the folks that I met both inside the company and in the startup space, finding those technologies, talking about the problems that we have to work on, and finding that they were very excited about working on those technologies and working with Lockheed Martin,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google announced on June 1 that it plans to no longer bid<\/a> for future contracts on the Pentagon\u2019s Project Maven, which used the company\u2019s machine learning technologies to analyze drone imagery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Google\u2019s involvement in the program was disclosed earlier this year, it was met with internal criticism, including a petition signed by 4,000 employees imploring Google to vow never to work with the Defense Department, Wired magazine reported<\/a> in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But despite the controversy, Moran said he hasn\u2019t seen startup companies try to move away from working with defense companies \u2014 or accepting their seed money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know there\u2019s kind of an independent streak in the Valley, so maybe they want to keep some distance there,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I haven\u2019t seen it. When I go talk to companies \u2014 and again I\u2019m working at the engineering level a lot of times \u2014 they are absolutely enthralled by the types of things that we work on and love the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lockheed Martin’s venture capital investments include a company called Terran Orbital, which is a partner to Lockheed on the LM50 nanosatellite shown here. (Lockheed Martin)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Major defense primes including Lockheed, Boeing and Airbus have recently started venture funds with the hope of deepening ties with fledgling commercial tech businesses, and Moran said the companies\u2019 engagements in Silicon Valley have made defense firms more credible as a partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, Lockheed is doubling down on its investments. Moran announced during the roundtable that Lockheed will take $100 million of the money saved from recent tax reform legislation<\/a> and funnel it into the its venture capital fund \u2014 increasing that pool of money two times over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2016, the company has invested $40 million in eight companies, some of which have not be publicly disclosed. While Lockheed\u2019s venture capital arm gets about 500 leads on new technology a year, Moran wants to be able to double that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019d love to go from \u2014 generically \u2014 about four investments per year, we\u2019d love to get to six or even eight,\u201d he said. \u201cThe $200 million will help us to work with more companies, and our goal is to try to get those relationships teed up earlier than later.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\t