The Pentagon, which began making capital commitments to U.S. enterprise capital funds round three years in the past, has begun making new allocations to funds that put money into “critical” applied sciences it deems vital to nationwide safety.
The Division of Protection, by way of the Workplace of Strategic Capital and the Small Enterprise Administration, dedicated $150 million to Mare Liberum, a maritime technology-focused enterprise fund based three years in the past, for its second funding fund, Fortune has discovered. The capital was dedicated in Sep. 2025.
The Pentagon introduced its first 13 commitments in late 2024, and some months later, shortly earlier than President Trump’s Inauguration, printed a listing of 17 funds that had been added to this system in early 2025, together with America’s Frontier Fund, which is backed by Eric Schmidt and Peter Thiel. The Division of Protection has since gone quiet on this system, nevertheless, not saying any additional commitments. The Division of Protection seems to have made 5 different VC fund commitments since 2025, although Fortune was not capable of study the small print of the investments.
“The process was extremely onerous,” says Erik Bethel, a normal associate at Mare Liberum, who says the vetting course of took about 10 months, and that Mare Liberum underwent reference checks, rigorous due diligence, and spent greater than “six figures of legal” payments to change into considered one of 23 companies to be chosen by the Workplace of Strategic Capital. Greater than 386 companies have utilized for this system because it launched, in line with a memo the agency put collectively that was shared with Fortune. The Workplace of Strategic Capital didn’t reply to Fortune’s request for remark concerning the mortgage.
The deal is structured as an as much as $150 million mortgage, the place curiosity accrues however isn’t paid again for 10 years. The capital from the Pentagon is supposed to function an anchor funding, however is contingent on the fund elevating one other $120 million from non-public restricted companions. Within the Pentagon’s first cohort of loans, capital went to companies that invested in biotechnology, quantum science, area tech, and renewable power technology and storage, amongst different sectors.
Mare Liberum is concentrated significantly on maritime know-how, the place its companions say world provide chains are evolving and unmanned programs are altering the panorama.
“Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen this incredible convergence of compute, now artificial intelligence,” says Rear Admiral Lorin Selby, who had served as Chief of Naval Analysis for the Navy earlier than retiring and becoming a member of the fund, and mentioned that he noticed a dire want to use these new compute and AI applied sciences to the protection sector.
The fund has backed 5 firms up to now, together with Regent Craft, a seaglider startup, and Epirus, a counter-drone firm.
Underneath the Trump Administration, the Division of Protection has change into rather more vocal concerning the significance of investments in protection know-how. It has additionally generally change into combative with a few of the firms it has contracted with. Final week, President Trump introduced by way of Fact Social that federal businesses should cease working with the LLM firm Anthropic, and Secretary of Warfare Pete Hegseth later tweeted that he was directing the Pentagon to designate Anthropic a “supply-chain risk.”
When requested concerning the potential fallout of this on the sector, Rear Admiral Selby mentioned he hopes the tech business gained’t revert again to outdated tendencies and cease working with the Division of Protection, as Google famously did again in 2019. “I hope cooler heads can prevail, that we can get the politically-charged nature out of the discussion, and talk about what is best for this nation, and how do we adopt the technologies to allow us to succeed in this race against China. That’s what I think it’s going to come down to,” he mentioned.
