Venture investors looking to tap the defense-tech boom need to get their heads around a very different kind of pitch, as slides from naval-systems unicorn Saronic show. Out are hockey-stick graphs of user growth and anticipated revenues. In are dense, acronym-filled bullet points about “key engagements” and “robust lobbying efforts” that might lead to the holy grail, a “program of record.” The nature of Pentagon contracting long made it a no-go land for startups, but Palantir, SpaceX, and more recently Anduril have shown what’s possible and broken the taboo. Now, with Silicon Valley investors including Founders Fund and a16z enjoying unparalleled influence in Washington and a fresh pot of $150 billion for high-tech weapons on offer, defense-tech is second only to AI — albeit by some distance — on VCs’ radar. So far, seven defense-tech startups — SpaceX, Anduril, Helsing, Shield AI, Saronic, Epirus, and Hadrian — have raised $500 million in VC cash or more. You might call the group “the Capital Cannons Club.” Here at Newcomer, we’ll be doing more coverage of these heavily-funded defense-tech companies, whose businesses depend on obtaining long-term engagements and whose progress therefore can be hard to assess. First up is Saronic, which raised a $600 million Series C in February, catapulting its valuation to approximately $4 billion and funding its flagship “Port Alpha” autonomous shipyard initiative in San Diego. We’ve got a fundraising deck that Saronic used to make its case last year.