Pre‑Seed → Series A · Backing Focused Builders
Tareyton Ventures: early-stage capital for defense technology, critical industries, and American resilience
Ventures
Investing in the Foundations ofAmerican Resilience
Early-stage capital for defense technology and critical industries.
The Thesis
Private. Patient. Patriotic.
Robotics and smart machines in the age of AI deliver asymmetric benefits of scale, across both economic and power factors. The convergence is structural, not cyclical, and it is reshaping the defense industrial base in favor of early-stage companies built on accelerated timelines.
Policy, capital, and technology now point the same way. We underwrite the $153B of defense spend already fixed by statute through FY29: mandatory, multi-year, and immune to budget cycles. $124B of it maps to the budget sections we target, with $32B+ in named programs across our four focus areas. The $1.5T headline request is not the market: in FY25, venture-backed national security companies won $4.3B in federal obligations against roughly $50B of venture invested. Tareyton backs the few companies built to convert.
We enter at pre-seed through Series A, constructing a concentrated portfolio of 15–25 companies where conviction matters more than consensus. The majority of our deal flow is proprietary, sourced through SEAL and SOF networks, Service Academy alumni, Stanford GSB, and founder networks before it reaches the broader market.
Mandatory Law
Codified in statute. Immune to budget cycles, election swings, and CR politics.
Production-Ready
Edge AI, autonomy, and advanced manufacturing have crossed the chasm.
Capital Is Selective
~$10 of venture in for every $1 of federal obligations out (FY25). Most of the sector won’t convert; we back the ones that do.
$20K vs $2M
$20K drones force $2M missile responses. Mass at the edge wins, and drives doctrine.
Focus Areas
Where we focus.
AI-Native & Agentic Platforms
Geospatial AI, decision support, agentic autonomy, and edge AI at the tactical level.
Physical AI & Autonomous Systems
Robotics and autonomous platforms operating in the physical world: UAS, UGVs, UUVs, and collaborative combat aircraft, plus the counter-drone systems that defeat them. Attritable mass across every domain.
Advanced Manufacturing
AI-driven production, additive manufacturing, and rebuilding the arsenal at wartime rate.
Critical Supply Chains & Logistics
Munitions, low-cost hypersonics, solid rocket motors, critical minerals, energy generation, and contested logistics at scale.
FIGURES: NAMED PROGRAMS WITHIN THE $153B MANDATORY TRANCHE, AVAILABLE THROUGH FY2029.
Active Positions
Fund I.
Scout AIFoundation model for defense robotics. One operator commands robots across land, air, and sea in plain language, fully autonomous in GPS- and comms-denied environments. Raised a $100M Series A in April 2026 to build Fury, the AI brain for unmanned warfare.
Raven Space SystemsMicrowave-cured composite 3D printing for hypersonics, reentry vehicles, and thermal protection systems. Aerospace-grade structures without hard tooling or long lead times. Broomfield, CO; backed by AFWERX, NASA, and NSF.
REAXNext-generation unmanned, attritable systems that solve Department of War (DoW) platform and logistics gaps, built by the co-founder and former President of Hermeus. Oversubscribed $7.25M pre-seed.
Atlas Fusion (Pending Close)Compact Z-Pinch fusion reactor with AI-driven plasma stabilization. A single magnetically compressed plasma column generating 100+ MW in a scalable system, without cryogenics or complex magnet hardware.
Next Mission: Yours
Submit deal flow →
Sourcing & Selection Since 2021
Investing with Conviction.
Autonomy and mesh communications for defense and industrial ground vehicles; ROGUE Fires program of record.
Energy-dense autonomous underwater vehicles: affordable, attritable undersea mass at conflict scale.
Frontier AI lab building models for defense and national security.
Natural-language search engine for geospatial and Earth intelligence.
AI-driven robotic sheet-metal manufacturing for aerospace and defense.
Autonomous power deployment: robotically engineered, high-density solar power plants.
Origination engine making early-stage energy and industrial infrastructure investable.
AI content protection: real-time piracy detection and automated enforcement.
Data context software ensuring data is used correctly and compliantly.
Frontier AI research and deployment.
Launch, Starlink, and national security space.
Full portfolio available to investors on request.
SPV, TVP MicroFund I, and personal positions are held outside Fund I. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
"Tarey backed Danti early and never went passive. He understands both the defense customer and what founders actually go through, and he's one of my first calls when something matters."
Jesse Kallman · Founder & CEO, Danti
"Tarey gets hardware and he gets the mission. He moved fast when it counted, and he can open doors. He thinks like an operator, with relentless focus and efficiency."
Skyler Shuford · Founder & CEO, REAX
"Tarey is patient capital in the truest sense. He backed us early, stayed engaged through the hard parts, and brings a builder's mindset to everything from strategy to fundraising."
Eric Brown · CEO, Planted
Founding Partner
Operator. Investor. Veteran.
Tarey M. Gettys
Founder & General Partner
LinkedIn ↗A B.S. in Mathematics from the U.S. Naval Academy; Surface Warfare and SEAL Officer; an MBA from Stanford GSB; and a decade-plus of finance and early-stage operating experience.
His mother a Peruvian immigrant; his grandfather, father, brother, and uncles U.S. Marines; his sister and her husband retired from the U.S. Air Force. Tarey is the third generation of his family to serve in uniform.
Tareyton Ventures
Early-stage investing focused on critical industries & national security.
Solo GP Investing
Launched TVP MicroFund I; built a portfolio of early-stage companies across critical industries and national security as a solo general partner.
Operator & CVC
Began early-stage angel investing in 2016. From 2017, senior investor on Guardian Life’s $100M corporate venture fund. Brought in by founders and investors at pivotal moments to stabilize and reposition companies for growth, including Securrency (later acquired by DTCC) and VIEVU (later acquired by Axon).
Institutional Finance
Manager diligence from the allocator's side of the table at PAAMCO, a $10B fund of hedge funds. Institutional client stewardship at PIMCO across an $8.8B book. Distribution and strategy at Amundi Smith Breeden and Dimensional.
Stanford GSB
MBA in General Management with emphasis in Finance and Entrepreneurship. President of the GSB Veterans Club; founded the Jack McDonald Military Service Appreciation Award, presented annually ever since to leaders of industry and government who served in uniform and gave back.
Naval Officer & SEAL
Surface Warfare Officer onboard USS Coronado and USS Ogden, then SEAL Officer with SEAL Teams FOUR and EIGHT conducting sensitive operations at a global scale. Left service as a Lieutenant Commander to attend Stanford Business School.
Team
The team.
Institutional finance expert with thirty years across PIMCO, Apollo, and Fortress. A 10-year Partner at Apollo expanding the credit platform; most recently Co-Head of Fortress’s Client Product & Solutions Group, running institutional sales, private wealth, product, and IR globally with a team of 40. Co-opened PIMCO’s New York office. Kellogg MBA. Leads capital formation and investor relations.
LinkedIn ↗Former Army Special Forces Officer and Danaher operator, with global marketing for a $600M portfolio and a Six Sigma Black Belt. Led the Navy’s West Coast Shipyard Study for the Submarine Industrial Base. Venture roles at TFX and Quake across AI, cyber, and fintech. Leads deal flow, diligence, and portfolio operations.
LinkedIn ↗Advisory Board
Actively supporting portfolio companies.
Operators
Navy SEAL senior leader and former NSWDG Commander with direct access across DoW, JSOC, and SOCOM. Validates defense deals for operational authenticity and provides a strategic lens on warfighter requirements and procurement at the highest levels of the U.S. military and across the Pentagon.
LinkedIn ↗Founder and CEO of Charthouse Strategic Advisory. A decade at Lockheed Martin, culminating as Chief Executive for Asia, working at head-of-state level. CGO at Research Innovations across joint all-domain C2, cyber, and information effects.
LinkedIn ↗Technology
Senior Software Engineer at Google and formerly of IBM T.J. Watson. AI/ML expert whose insights separate real defense technology from vaporware, with deep technical diligence on foundation models, edge AI, and autonomous systems: the same technologies powering the next generation of defense platforms.
LinkedIn ↗SVP and former CTO of Analog Devices, whose silicon sits inside platforms from F-35 to Aegis. Provides hardware diligence and defense prime engineering relationships that validate our Advanced Manufacturing and Autonomous Systems thesis from the silicon up.
LinkedIn ↗Finance & Growth
Institutional chief investment officer with more than twenty years allocating across private equity and venture, including Cedars-Sinai, Caltech, and PAAMCO. Brings an allocator's perspective, portfolio construction discipline, and access to the capital networks that back later rounds.
LinkedIn ↗From the FBI to Microsoft, Cisco, and VP, Head of Global Public Sector at Snowflake, along with numerous advisory committee roles. Opens global government go-to-market channels for portfolio companies at scale, bringing deep federal sales expertise, intelligence community relationships, and growth execution that few operators can replicate.
LinkedIn ↗Business Network
Senior Operating Partner at Sileo Capital, making principal equity investments across North American industries; ex-Citi and a Naval Academy graduate. Has served as President, CFO, and CGO across four portfolio companies in telecom and infrastructure.
Co-Founder and CEO of Clara Copilot, a decision-support platform automating intelligence and information operations workflows. Former Special Operations Civil Affairs Team Commander, West Point graduate, and Wharton MBA.
Working advisors, not names on a page. They sit on live diligence calls, tell us whether a requirement is real, pressure-test technology claims before we write a check, and open prime and federal channels for the companies we back.
Supported by a broader network of founders, operators, senior veterans, and industry experts across the Department of War and Silicon Valley.
Contact
Send It.
Building something the mission needs? A warm reference, short email, and a focused deck beats a polished pitch. Reach out.
Investor inquiries: invest@tareytonventures.com.
A dedicated share of Tareyton’s carry goes to the Navy SEAL Foundation, where Tarey proudly serves as an Ambassador.