Silent Ventures

Silent Ventures is an early stage venture firm that invests in exceptional founders building unrivaled aerospace, defense, and national security companies.

Team

Jackson Moses - Silent Ventures

Jackson Moses • Founder & Managing Partner

A proven serial entrepreneur and early defense tech investor, Jackson Moses currently serves as the Founder and Managing Partner of Silent Ventures, an early stage venture firm that invests in exceptional founders building unrivaled aerospace, defense, and national security startups. He also founded and manages Silent Capital, a private syndicate that provides its members exclusive access to leading multi-stage defense and frontier tech deals. Additionally, Jackson serves as a Senior Advisor to the founding teams of Castelion and Privateer Space.Prior to founding Silent Ventures, Jackson founded and served as VP of Partnerships at MainStreet: the first tech company to make R&D tax credits accessible to startups and SMBs via industry-leading workflows and integrations. As a founding executive, he was responsible for developing go-to-market strategies, building a world-class sales organization, managing business development initiatives, and scaling annual revenue to over $30M. To date, MainStreet has employed hundreds of people and helped 2,000+ startups claim over $150M in tax savings, collectively extending their runway by centuries.Prior to founding MainStreet, Jackson founded and served as Chairman & CEO of Spectrum Labs (enterprise AIaaS), which was acquired by ActiveFence after last being valued at $137M. Spectrum Labs pioneered multimodal LLMs, specifically a series of proprietary GPT foundation models, designed to make digital communities more profitable for Fortune 500 owners, marketers, influencers, and their users. Its customer base spanned gaming, dating, and social media, and included Tencent (TCEHY), Pinterest (NYSE: PINS), Grindr (NYSE: GRND), Yik Yak, Wildlife Studios, and The Meet Group, among others.Prior to founding Spectrum Labs, Jackson worked in sales (Lynda.com), customer operations, and executive recruiting at LinkedIn (acquired by Microsoft). Prior to this, he worked as a Market Research Analyst at Cisco where he evaluated industry trends, new investment opportunities, and emerging threats to Cisco’s core business lines.Having raised $120M+ across his two companies, Jackson actively advises startups, venture firms, and family offices on private sector aerospace and defense tech trends, investment opportunities, and capital allocation strategies. He serves as a Venture Partner to several large firms and has sourced deals for 8VC, a16z, Airbus Ventures, Tribe Capital, Quiet Capital, Susa Ventures, Lavrock Ventures, Cubit Capital, and defense primes.Jackson holds two B.A. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley where he studied Economics, with a concentration in monetary policy, and Political Science, with a concentration in game theory.


Our Companies


Select Prior Investments

Actual first checks in and true early stage investments.


Portfolio & Fund News


Crunchbase - Silent Ventures

a16z, Founders Fund & Silent Ventures Lead The Way In Defense Tech Venture Capital

The only other firm to have double-digit investments in the defense tech space may not be as well-known to the venture world, but Dallas-based Silent Ventures has completed ten defense deals since 2021. This is because the firm explicitly specializes in aerospace, defense, and national security.Read More


TechCrunch - Silent Ventures

Swarmbotics Founders Grew ‘Obsessed With Robot Swarms’ & Now Plan To Bring Them To The Battlefield

Few ground-based autonomous systems are deployed on the battlefield, but one startup is looking to change that with robotic systems that use cooperative behaviors to boost troops’ intelligence and tactical advantage. These systems are called “swarms,” and they are collections of autonomous robots that can coordinate their actions using AI.Read More


Business Insider - Silent Ventures

2024's Most Promising Startups, According To Top VCs

2024 will be a banner vintage for funds to invest in startups. To identify which companies have a head start on success, we asked venture capitalists from firms such as Accel, Founders Fund, and Greylock, as well as managers of newer and boutique funds, to name this year's most promising startups.Read More


Axios - Silent Ventures

Saronic Raises $175 Million For Military Drone Boats

Saronic, an Austin, Texas-based maker of autonomous surface vehicles for the U.S. Navy, raised $175 million in new venture capital funding at a $1B valuation. The U.S. Navy wants a hybrid fleet - with unmanned vessels capable of shooting, jamming, communicating - and defense contractors large and small are rushing to fill the gap.Read More


Fortune - Silent Ventures

Armada Lands $40 Million In Funding Round Led By Microsoft’s M12

Armada, an edge-computing pioneer redefining the future of connectivity, compute, and AI, today announced a $40 million funding round led by Microsoft's M12, raising its total to over $100 million. This funding comes as all Armada products are now available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, with Azure customers able to use pre-committed Azure spend on Armada products.Read More


Business Insider - Silent Ventures

The Seed 100: The Best Early-Stage Investors Of 2024

Behind most founders is an early-stage investor who saw their potential, nurtured their ambition, and backed their ideas. These are not just check-writers but shrewd risk-takers, enthusiastic collaborators, and trend forecasters. Now in its fourth year, the Seed 100 list celebrates these figures - the kingmakers who provide the vital first push startups need to become industry titans.Read More


Business Insider - Silent Ventures

The Top Defense Tech VCs To Know

Defense technology and its coterie of investors were once a cottage industry within the enterprise software-driven venture capital world. That's rapidly changing. What has emerged is a techno-optimist patriotism among startup founders and investors alike, fueled by growing tensions and military technological gaps between the U.S. and geopolitical arch-rivals Russia and China.Read More


47G - Silent Ventures

Venture Capital's Return To Aerospace & Defense

Aerospace and defense were at the forefront of early VC investment but slowly declined after the end of the Cold War. Recent geopolitical trends, validated by the success of venture-backed startups like SpaceX and Palantir, highlight the need and opportunity to invest in aerospace, defense, and what now some call “deep tech.”Read More


The Executive - Silent Ventures

Serial Entrepreneur & Silent Ventures Founder Jackson Moses Joins The Executive Podcast To Discuss Defense Tech

In this interview, Jackson Moses shares insights learned from his experiences as a serial entrepreneur and early-stage A&D investor. From navigating the complexities of defense tech to advising startups and venture firms on corporate strategies, Jackson offers practical advice and actionable takeaways for aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned investors alike.Read More


PR Newswire - Silent Ventures

Firestorm Announces $12.5M In Seed Funding Led By Lockheed Martin Ventures & Silent Ventures

Firestorm, a California-based Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) manufacturer that is leading the charge in expeditionary additive manufacturing, has announced $12.5M in seed investment by Lockheed Martin Ventures and prominent defense investors. This new capital will enable Firestorm to scale its team and production to meet growing demands for its products.Read More


TechCrunch - Silent Ventures

Hadrian Raises $117M, CEO Wants To Defy History And Revitalize American Industry

Hadrian is targeting high-precision CNC machining, a manufacturing process where parts frequently require tolerances down to the micron level. CEO Chris Power said the company is focused on automating the core, labor-intensive steps that start when the customer orders a part to that part being shipped.Read More


47G - Silent Ventures

Silent Ventures Founder Shares How To Build A Successful Defense Tech Company

Jackson Moses, Founder of Silent Ventures and early investor in Anduril, CHAOS, Saronic, Hadrian, and Armada AI, shares his advice on how to build, finance, and scale across deep tech sectors including satellite technology, commercial space, air mobility, autonomy, defense tech, national security, and aerospace, among others.Read More


Payload - Silent Ventures

Armada AI Emerges From Stealth With $55M From Founders Fund & Lux Capital

Armada, an SF-based startup building AI-powered tools to improve data processing, emerged from stealth yesterday with $55M in hand. The company is building a full stack platform for edge computing meant to ease the pain of processing data regardless of where it comes from or where it’s going.Read More


TechCrunch - Silent Ventures

Five Investors Have High Hopes For Defense Tech Amid Growing Venture Interest

Defense tech is a generational opportunity best categorized as dot-com 2.0. It is the patient arbitrage of a massive market historically defined by inertia, occupied by imperfect legacy businesses, plagued by suboptimal public-private relationships, and hindered by entrenched structural deficiencies that incentivize improper behavior at the expense of national security.Read More


TechCrunch - Silent Ventures

Saronic, A Defense Startup Building Autonomous Ships, Raises $55M From 8VC

“We build our boats around the mission, not the mission around the boat,” Saronic CEO Dino Mavrookas told TechCrunch. “Saronic fills a gap where shipbuilders, traditionally focused on manufacturing large naval ships, lack the capacity and expertise, while other vendors provide legacy platforms and struggle with production at scale.”Read More


Crunchbase - Silent Ventures

CHAOS Industries Lands $70M From 8VC As Defense Tech Heats Up

Defense and critical industry technologies company CHAOS closed a $70 million Series A led by 8VC - becoming the latest startup with a focus on defense tech to close a significant round. CHAOS has multiple products in development, including COHERENCE, a sensor, detection and radar solution “with broad defense and commercial applications.”Read More


SpaceNews - Silent Ventures

Solestial Closes $10 Million Round Led By Airbus Ventures

Solestial, a Tempe, Arizona company focused on solar energy for space applications, closed a $10 million funding round led by Airbus Ventures and AEI HorizonX. “With this seed round, we will fully validate the technology and then prepare ourselves to transition to mass production of solar cells and panels,” said Solestial CEO Stanislau Herasimenka.Read More


Limited Partner Reports

Silent Ventures - Market Research

As a leading early stage aerospace and defense tech fund, Silent Ventures is privileged to operate at the frontlines of America’s most critical frontier markets. In doing so, we’re exposed to exceptional founders and idiosyncratic ideas bordering on the edge of plausible science fiction. When it comes to building things that matter, Silent Ventures reviews hundreds of cutting-edge startups each quarter, which provides the fund, and its LPs, unique visibility into noteworthy A&D trends.To date, these proprietary insights have only been shared with Fund LPs. We’ve now made the decision to publish our findings and make them available to the broader ecosystem. It’s our hope that releasing such information encourages more good people to become involved in defense tech, thereby further stimulating Western innovation and re-invigorating American Resilience.


SILENT PRIVACY POLICY

SILENT PRIVACY POLICYSilent Ventures Management, LLC., together with its affiliates and funds (“Silent”, “us”, “our” or “we”), have created this Privacy Policy to explain how we collect, use, store, share and transfer personal data and information (“Personal Data”) we obtain through our website located at www.silentvc.com (the “Sites”), the Internet services that we offer (together with the Sites, the “Internet Services”), as well as through other means, as described below. Investors, employees, contractors and job applicants may receive a supplementary privacy notice and, in the event of any conflict with this Privacy Policy, the terms of such supplementary privacy notice will control.When we use the term “Personal Data” in this Privacy Policy, we mean information relating to an identifiable individual person.Where permitted by law, by using the Internet Services you consent to such use of your Personal Data and agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy.Depending on where you are located and your interactions with the Internet Services, certain processing of your Personal Data by Silent may be subject to data protection and privacy laws, including the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”), the UK Data Protection Act of 2018 along with the “UK GDPR” as retained as UK law by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (together, the “UK GDPR”). and the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (together, the “CCPA”). For example, this may be the case where Silent processes the Personal Data of individuals in the EU and the UK who use the Internet Services (the “EU/UK Processing”) or of users of the Sites who reside in California (the “CCPA Processing”).This Privacy Policy makes clear where its disclosures apply only to the EU/UK Processing or to the CCPA Processing. All other disclosures in this Privacy Policy relate to Personal Data to which the GDPR, the UK GDPR and the CCPA do not apply, as well as to the EU/UK Processing and the CCPA Processing.This Privacy Policy was updated as of August 5, 2023.Personal Data We CollectWe collect and use Personal Data in a number of ways, depending on how you interact with us. These include when you interact with us on our Sites and Internet Services, when you contact us by email, telephone or by other means, and when you visit one of our offices. If you provide Personal Data about any person other than yourself, you must ensure they understand how their Personal Data will be used and that they have given their permission for you to disclose the Personal Data to us and our outsourced service providers to use.Information You Submit Through the Internet Services. When you interact with our Sites and other Internet Services, we may collect information you voluntarily provide to us, such as when you complete one of our online forms, join our mailing list or login to our investor portals. This information may include:(1) Identifiers, such as your name, user name and password, as well as contact details, such as your personal or work postal address, email address and phone number;(2) Personal Information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)), such as name, address and telephone number;(3) Sensitive Personal Information such as your account log-in;(4) Information about your communications with us, including the Personal Data you provide to us in email or in conversations with our employees and personnel; and(5) Your marketing preferences, including any consents you have given us.Information We Collect Automatically Through Our Internet Services. We automatically collect certain Personal Data including internet and other electronic activity information to help us understand how you use the Internet Services (which we will refer to in this Privacy Policy collectively as “Usage Data”). For example, each time you visit the Sites, we may automatically collect your IP address, browser and computer or device type, access time, the webpage from which you came and the webpage(s) that you access during your visit. We may combine Usage Data with other Personal Data in a manner that enables us to trace Usage Data to an individual user. Some web browsers may have “do not track” settings. The Sites do not honor “do not track” settings.Information We Collect From Third Parties. On occasion, we may receive Personal Data from third party sources, such as where our trusted suppliers provide web analytics and reporting services to us.Information We Collect When You Visit One of Our Offices. When you visit one of our offices, we may collect Personal Data from you, including identifiers such as your name when you sign in at our front desk, and visual information collected through security cameras, among other things.Sensitive Personal Information. We may collect information that is considered “sensitive” under some laws including the CCPA, such as your account log-in if you log into our portal. When we do so, we use such information only for lawful purposes in compliance with the CCPA, GDPR and other applicable privacy laws, such as to perform the services or provide the goods requested by you and to resist malicious, deceptive, fraudulent or illegal actions. Where required by applicable law, we will obtain your consent prior to processing.Cookies. We may use cookies (which are small amounts of data sent from a web server to your browser that are stored on your computer’s hard drive) to keep track of your use of the Internet Services, to validate your identity, to remember your password and preferences, to tailor the Internet Services to your account and to meet your interests and to improve the quality of the Internet Services. Generally, you can set your browser not to accept cookies or to notify you if you are sent a cookie, giving you the opportunity to choose whether or not to accept the cookie. Please note that if you do set your browser not to accept cookies, certain Internet Services may not function properly. We use Google Analytics to understand Site traffic. To learn more about the use of Cookies by Google for analytics and to exercise choice regarding those Cookies, please visit the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.Children. We do not knowingly collect Personal Data from minors under the age of 16 nor do we target the Sites to minors.Our Use of Personal Data. Please contact legal@silentvc.com to learn the purposes for which we process the Personal Data referred to above, and any information you give us, as well as the legal basis for the use of Personal Data that is subject to the EU/UK Processing.EU/UK Disclosure: Where we require Personal Data to comply with our legal or contractual obligations, the provision of such Personal Data is mandatory. If it is not provided, then we may not be able to provide the Internet Services. In all other cases, the provision of requested Personal Data is optional.EU/UK Disclosure: We will not use Personal Data to formulate a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) which produces legal effects or similarly significantly impacts you.Our Personal Data Sharing PracticesWe employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf, such as for analyzing data and providing certain of the Internet Services. These third-party service providers have access to Personal Data needed to perform their functions, but we require that they do not use Personal Data for other purposes. Personal Data is not shared with any unaffiliated third parties for their marketing purposes unless we have obtained your consent to do so in accordance with applicable law.We may share Personal Data with third parties: (1) in response to subpoenas, court orders, regulatory requests or legal process, or to establish, protect or exercise our legal rights and interests or to defend against legal claims; (2) if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent or take action regarding inappropriate or illegal activities, fraud or situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person or property; (3) if we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent or take action regarding inappropriate use of the Internet Services; (4) to our parent company, subsidiaries, joint ventures or other companies under common control with us (in which case we will require such entities to honor this Privacy Policy); and (5) as part of a corporate transaction with a successor or affiliate or in connected with any acquisition, merger or sale of assets.CCPA Disclosure: We may disclose the following categories of Personal Data to third parties for the business or commercial purposes described above: (1) identifiers, including your name, user name and password and contact details, such as your personal or work postal address, email address and phone number; (2) commercial information, including your marketing preferences and any consents you have given us; (3) Internet or other electronic network activity information, including information related to the browser or device you use to access the Sites, your IP address and your cookie preferences; (4) professional and employment information, such as where we are making employment references; and (5) visual information collected through our security cameras for legal or regulatory compliance or investigatory purposes. We do not sell your Personal Data, nor do we share it for purposes of cross-context behavioral advertising, and we have not done so in the last 12 months. We do not sell or share the Personal Data of minors.EU/UK Disclosure: Your Personal Data may be transferred to, processed in and accessed from jurisdictions outside the EU and the UK by Silent and the third parties with which we share your Personal Data. Specifically, your Personal Data will be transferred to Silent entities and third parties in the United States of America. When we transfer your Personal Data among Silent entities, or to other third party organizations, we will do so in accordance with the GDPR and/or the UK GDPR, including through the use of European Commission-approved standard contractual clauses, a third party’s binding corporate rules or where we are entitled to rely on one of the other safeguards permitted by the GDPR and/or the UK GDPR.Your RightsWe have controls in place designed to ensure that the Personal Data we collect and process is relevant, accurate and appropriate for the purposes it is used. If you believe that any Personal Data about you is inaccurate, please let us know by contacting us at legal@silentvc.com. Please note that any Personal Data we have copied may remain in back-up storage for some period of time after your request, and that if you delete certain Personal Data, you may not be able to use the Internet Services in the future without re-submitting such information. Please also note that we will maintain Personal Data whenever we are required to do so by law or regulation.Individuals in a number of jurisdictions may have certain rights in relation to their Personal Data. These rights vary, but they may include the right to: (1) request access to and rectification or erasure of their Personal Data; (2) restrict or object to the processing of their Personal Data; and (3) obtain a copy of their Personal Data in a portable format. Individuals may also have the right to lodge a complaint about Silent's processing of their Personal Data with a data protection authority. The rights described herein are not absolute and may not be applicable to you. We reserve all of our rights available to us at law in this regard. If you wish to exercise any of the rights described in this Your Rights section, please email legal@silentvc.com.If you wish to exercise your rights, we will need to verify your identity. To do so, we will request that you match specific pieces of information you have provided us previously, as well as, in some instances, ask you to provide a signed declaration under penalty of perjury that you are the individual whose Personal Data is the subject of the request. If it is necessary to collect additional information (including Personal Data) from you, we will use the information only for verification purposes and will delete it as soon as practicable after complying with the request. For requests related to particularly sensitive Personal Data, we may require additional proof of identification. If you make a request through an authorized agent, we will require written proof that the agent is authorized to act on your behalf. We will process your request within the time provided by applicable law.EU/UK Disclosure: You may be entitled to ask Silent for a copy of your Personal Data, to correct, delete or restrict processing of it, and to obtain the Personal Data you provide in a structured, machine-readable format and ask us to share this Personal Data with other organizations. You may also have the right to object to processing in some circumstances and can ask us not to send you direct marketing or to carry out profiling at any time. You have the right to lodge a complaint about Silent's processing of your Personal Data with a data protection authority in the place you live, work or where the breach occurred. Where we have asked for your consent, you may withdraw consent at any time. If you ask to withdraw your consent to Silent processing your Personal Data, this will not affect any processing that has already taken place. These rights may be limited, for example, if fulfilling your request would reveal Personal Data about another person, where they would infringe the rights of a third party (including our rights) or if you ask us to delete Personal Data that we are required by law to keep or have compelling legitimate interests in keeping. We will inform you of relevant exemptions we rely upon when responding to any request you make.CCPA Disclosure: If you are a California resident, you may be entitled to request access to the categories or specific pieces of Personal Data that Silent collects about you, to request that Silent deletes or corrects your Personal Data and to opt out of the sale and/or sharing of your Personal Data. Although California residents may have the right to opt out of the sale and sharing of Personal Data, Silent does not sell or share Personal Data as the terms “sell” and “share” are used under the CCPA to third parties, including Personal Data of individuals under 16 years of age, and we have not sold or shared such Personal Data in the last 12 months. The CCPA prohibits Silent from discriminating against you for exercising your applicable CCPA rights.If you wish to exercise any of the rights described in this CCPA Disclosure section, please email legal@silentvc.com. In order to respond to a request, you will be required to supply a valid means of identification as a security precaution. Depending on the sensitivity of the information in question, we may require additional proof of identification. We will not disclose or delete any information until the individual’s identity is verified. If an agent makes a request on your behalf, they will be required to verify the request by submitting your written authorization, and we may still ask that you verify your identity with us before we can proceed with the request. We will not honor any requests from agents until authorization is verified. We will maintain records of consumer requests made under CCPA and how we responded to those requests in accordance with the CCPA.

California Shine the Light Disclosure: Under California Civil law, Californians are also entitled to request information relating to whether a business has disclosed Personal Data to any third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. If you are making a request for access, we may not be able to provide specific pieces of Personal Data if the disclosure creates a substantial, articulable and unreasonable risk to the security of your Personal Data, your account with us or our systems or networks. If you are making a request for erasure, we will ask that you confirm that you would like us to delete your Personal Data again before your request is submitted. To make a request, please contact us at the contact information below.Retaining Your Personal DataWhere we process your Personal Data in connection with the Internet Services, we keep the Personal Data to comply with our legal obligations or to communicate with you because you still have another connection with Silent. Where we process your Personal Data for marketing purposes or with your consent, we process the data until you ask us to stop and for a short period after that (to allow us to implement your requests). We also keep a record of the fact that you have asked us not to send you direct marketing or to process your Personal Data so that we can respect your request in future. We maintain administrative and financial records and use multiple methods to back up our data and systems to ensure reliable data recovery in the event of a significant business disruption, and we retain this information in accordance with our Personal Data Retention and Destruction Policy. We retain all other Personal Data for the time necessary to achieve the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, taking into account the statute of limitations period and record retention requirements under applicable law.SEC Regulations S-P, S-AM and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley ActSome regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.K. Information Commissioner and the Federal Trade Commission, have adopted rules that require financial institutions, like Silent, to provide privacy policy notices to their clients. If you are a natural person who invests with us, that notice will govern how we use your Personal Data for the purposes specified in that notice.SecurityWe have implemented measures to help protect Personal Data from loss, misuse or unauthorized access or disclosure. While we strive to protect Personal Data, we cannot guarantee its security.Vulnerability ReportingIf you believe you have found a vulnerability or security concern with a Silent Ventures application or product, please submit a report to our team at legal@silentvc.com.Please include the type of issue, the name of the application or a URL, a proof of concept and the detailed steps required to reproduce the issue. We take all disclosures very seriously.LinksThe Sites may contain links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of any such other website (whether accessed through an advertisement, service or content link) and urge you to review such practices prior to submitting any information or Personal Data to such websites.ChangesWe may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in our sole discretion and encourage visitors to review this page frequently for any changes. Any updated version of this Privacy Policy will be effective as of the date set forth therein. If you are located in the United States of America or otherwise outside the EU or the UK, by continuing to use the Internet Services after such updates, you expressly agree to the terms of the updated Privacy Policy.QuestionsIf you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us by e-mail at legal@silentvc.com.