關於這一集
How Chariot Defense Replaced Product Market Fit With a Weight Test
Adam Warmoth took this interview from Fort Carson. A division commander had called him the Friday before and asked him to be in Colorado on Monday, so he was in Colorado, sitting in a vehicle with a Starlink terminal doing the work of an internet connection. Ross Fubini, who wrote Chariot’s first check, opened by pointing out that this is every call he has ever had with Adam.
One guest measuring things in the field, while the other measures the field. Both agreed to be unusually specific about how they make their decisions.
About the guests
Adam Warmoth is the founder and CEO of Chariot Defense. He started in the Stanford lab of Ilan Kroo, who had just come back to teaching after founding the first electric aircraft company on Larry Page’s money. That led to Kitty Hawk, then to Uber Elevate as one of the early employees, then to Anduril at roughly 200 people, where he built the counter intrusion business unit and then took over counter UAS air defense.
Ross Fubini is the founder and managing partner of XYZ Venture Capital. He was first money into Anduril and first money into Apex Space. A very long time ago he introduced Palantir’s first employee to its second. When he started XYZ almost ten years ago, the premise was simply that he should back people coming out of the Palantir ecosystem. He describes that premise as having been correct, “shockingly so.”
About the company
Chariot Defense builds the power layer for the battlefield. The Amphora systems are modular, high voltage, and low signature, and they charge and run the things that now go forward with a unit: drones, radars, comms, sensors, directed energy. Founded in late 2024 and headquartered in San Francisco, Chariot came out of stealth in July 2025 with an $8M seed led by General Catalyst, and announced a $34M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz in February 2026. XYZ was in both. Systems have been through JIFX at the Naval Postgraduate School, up to Alaska with the 11th Airborne, out to a National Training Center rotation with the Black Jack Brigade, and onto DIU Project GI.
Adam’s framing of the market is that there are three critical infrastructure layers under any robotic modernization story: comms, compute, and power. He thinks Palantir has taken the network layer and Anduril has taken edge compute, and that power is the third slot, and that after those three there are not really any more slots.
Chariot Defense: Website | LinkedIn
XYZ Venture Capital: https://www.xyz.vc
Crossing the Valley: https://www.valleycrossers.com
Adam Warmoth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwarmoth/
Ross Fubini: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fubini/
Noah Sheinbaum: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahsheinbaum/
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