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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Defense Unicorns raised $35 million in a Series A round co-led by Ansa Capital and Sapphire Ventures in 2024. The company builds software intended to help defense organizations deliver and operate applications in secure, disconnected environments. In January 2026, it reported a separate $136 million Series B and a valuation above $1 billion.
Who invested $35 million in Defense Unicorns?
Ansa Capital and Sapphire Ventures co-led the $35 million Series A. Ansa Capital’s announcement is dated March 7, 2024; Defense Unicorns’ company timeline places the financing event in February 2024. The company said it would use the funding for product development and growth in open-source software and AI for national-security missions.
The Series A was private-company financing, not a government contract or a public share offering. The amount raised does not by itself show how much revenue the company had, how much it spent, or what the investors’ stakes were.
What does Defense Unicorns do?
Founded in March 2021, Defense Unicorns develops software for delivering and managing applications in national-security environments, including systems that may be disconnected from the internet or operate under demanding security and compliance requirements. The company was founded by veterans of the Department of Defense software ecosystem, including people associated with Kessel Run, Space CAMP, and Platform One.
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Its early product-led work began with Zarf, an air-gap-native delivery tool. The company’s broader proposition is to make software more portable and practical to deploy across different defense computing environments, rather than requiring each program to solve delivery infrastructure from scratch.
What is UDS software, and can it run in air-gapped environments?
The Unified Defense Stack (UDS) is Defense Unicorns’ core platform. Publicly launched on October 9, 2024, UDS is designed for secure software delivery in air-gapped settings as well as cloud, on-premises, bare-metal, and tactical-edge environments. The company describes it as suitable for classified and unclassified national-security missions.
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Defense Unicorns says UDS satisfies up to 90% of the NIST 800-53 technical controls that program offices are responsible for in IL-4, IL-5, and IL-6 environments. That figure is the company’s claim; it should not be read as a finding that every deployment automatically meets all applicable authorization requirements. Programs still have to address their specific systems, configurations, and security obligations.
Alongside UDS, the company’s product family includes:
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- Zarf: an air-gap-native software delivery tool.
- Pepr, Lula, and LeapfrogAI: products included in the company’s product family in contemporaneous funding coverage.
- UDS Registry: positioned as a registry for the military software supply chain.
- UDS Army: intended to help commercial vendors bring secure, mission-ready software to Army programs.
What is the Airgap Store?
Announced on October 29, 2024, the Airgap Store is a marketplace for applications intended to work in fully disconnected, semi-disconnected, or otherwise highly secured environments. Its initial release included dozens of applications, and Defense Unicorns said it intended to grow the catalog to thousands.
Built on UDS, the store is meant to help Department of Defense program managers and operators discover and deploy pre-integrated, portable, secure, and compliant mission applications. The planned catalog size is an intended target, not a count of applications available at launch.
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How does Defense Unicorns support the Department of Defense?
Defense Unicorns’ software is designed to address the operational challenge of delivering updates and applications across varied, security-constrained environments. In its Series A announcement, Ansa Capital pointed to outdated systems, diverse computing environments, and complex security and compliance standards as obstacles to deploying modern capabilities on mission timelines.
SAIC announced a strategic partnership with Defense Unicorns on March 12, 2025. SAIC said it would integrate UDS into its software-delivery ecosystem across cloud, on-premises, and tactical-edge environments. The companies said the combined approach is intended to reduce delivery timelines from months to weeks or days; that is a stated goal, not a guaranteed result for every program. SAIC and Defense Unicorns described the software as trusted by critical systems in the U.S. Navy, Army, Air Force, and Space Force.
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How much is Defense Unicorns worth?
In a financing release dated January 13, 2026, Defense Unicorns reported completing a $136 million Series B led by Bain Capital and reaching a valuation above $1 billion. The release also reported a 300% year-over-year increase in adoption in military systems. These are company-reported figures; the valuation is not a public-market price, and the adoption figure is not independently specified here by a measurement method or baseline.
The Series B investors named in the release were Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, Ansa Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, AVP, Uncorrelated Ventures, and David H. Petraeus. The later financing shows continued fundraising after the 2024 Series A, but it does not change the amount or co-leads of that original round.
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