David Jeans
@DavidJeans2
Reporter @Reuters covering defense and space. Co-author of WONDER BOY: http://shorturl.at/bjKMS [email protected]
The WONDER BOY paperback is here! We're excited to share the story of Zappos leader Tony Hsieh, whose rise and fall told the quintessential Silicon Valley tragedy. "Mandatory reading for anyone who is interested in big tech" - New Yorker On sale here: amazon.com/Wonder-Boy-Zap…
Shield AI executives overlooked its V-BAT drone’s safety hazards, Forbes found. Now with sales falling short and the CEO stepping down, the company is trying to win back military customers. trib.al/D9vroBm
Shield AI executives overlooked its V-BAT drone’s safety hazards, Forbes found. Now with sales falling short and the CEO stepping down, the company is trying to win back military customers. trib.al/6ccCct0
I'm incredibly grateful for the 5+ years I spent at Forbes, a phenomenal newsroom where I first started covering Silicon Valley's shift toward the military. Am going to miss my talented colleagues there, not least my fearless editors @JohnPaczkowski and @SchwabKatharine
Update: Excited to share that I've joined Reuters as a space and defense correspondent. I'll be reporting on weapons, national security and Silicon Valley, focusing on major arms, space companies, and venture-backed startups. Send tips / say hi: [email protected]
Update: Excited to share that I've joined Reuters as a space and defense correspondent. I'll be reporting on weapons, national security and Silicon Valley, focusing on major arms, space companies, and venture-backed startups. Send tips / say hi: [email protected]
New- Will Somerindyke supplied munitions to warzones for years. Now with investor BVVC, he's joined the defense tech boom, and is in talks to raise "hundreds of millions" for Union, a startup making artillery shells. forbes.com/sites/davidjea…
SCOOP: ex-OpenAI staffers have raised $20M for a pre-launch startup, Applied Compute. Led by Benchmark, the round values the reinforcement learning startup at $100M. Its 3 founders, all recent Stanford students, have since fielded an offer 5x higher 👀 upstartsmedia.com/p/ex-openai-ap…
New- Last night Meta announced its mega $14B investment in Scale AI. But there's more to the deal: Meta could spend the majority of its annual AI budget on Scale over the next five years — a provision worth hundreds of millions in revenue for Scale. forbes.com/sites/davidjea…
New: Last week, Anduril's mega $30B funding round underscored how hungry investors are for military startups. It also minted a new defense tech billionaire: Trae Stephens. forbes.com/sites/davidjea…
The Midas List returns for a 24th year. With only a handful of IPOs, and acquisitions, the big driver of changes to our ranking of the world's best VCs have been mega raises from startups like OpenAI & SpaceX Check out the full @forbes list for 2025 forbes.com/lists/midas/
New from me: chatbots for schoolchildren dispensed dangerous information — including instructions for how to synthesize fentanyl and a date rape drug — in tests conducted by @Forbes. forbes.com/sites/emilybak…
“Meta is seeing every other big tech firm and reading the tea leaves, seeing that maybe the expected windfall from civilian use of AI is not going to appear,” said Shana Marshall, who focuses on international affairs at George Washington University. Great story by @DavidJeans2.…
New: Meta is recruiting former national security officials to bolster its military ambitions, months after allowing its Llama AI model to be used for military use. forbes.com/sites/davidjea…
Let's see how Silicon Valley's going
New: Hustle culture has always been ingrained in Silicon Valley’s DNA. Now as AI booms, some startups are requiring 6 or 7 day work weeks. One of them is Mercor, a $2 billion recruitment unicorn founded by Thiel Fellows. With @_IainMartin forbes.com/sites/richardn…
New: Hustle culture has always been ingrained in Silicon Valley’s DNA. Now as AI booms, some startups are requiring 6 or 7 day work weeks. One of them is Mercor, a $2 billion recruitment unicorn founded by Thiel Fellows. With @_IainMartin forbes.com/sites/richardn…
New: Khosla Ventures' Keith Rabois is in talks to lead a $100 million funding round into buzzy defense tech Mach Industries. Big vote of confidence for the LA-based startup, that could value it as high as $400M. forbes.com/sites/davidjea…
Scoop: Accel is leading a $275 million funding round into defense tech startup CHAOS Industries — just months after backing a previous round. The round values CHAOS, which makes radar and communications tecchnologies, at $2 billion. forbes.com/sites/davidjea…
Silicon Valley’s Military Drone Companies Have A Serious ‘Made In China’ Problem trib.al/LK7SYMh