$635M Exit → $600M Fund: The Critical Industries a16z's AD Fund is Investing in
David Ulevitch, General Partner | Anduril, Radiant, Base Power, Saronic, Exowatt, Apex
Why Magnetic Companies Win
a16z General Partner David Ulevitch joins Sourcery to break down the state of American Dynamism, their $600M fund, across defense, energy, mining, robotics, manufacturing, public safety, and national security.
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David highlights key a16z portfolio companies including Anduril, Radiant Nuclear, Base Power, Saronic, Exowatt, Apex, Skydio, Flock Safety, Longeye, & Mariana Minerals. Sharing his top 3 lessons from selling OpenDNS for $635M to Cisco, and why the best founders are magnetic attractors of capital and talent.
We also dive into Anduril’s authenticity-first marketing philosophy (“no renders” - Palmer Luckey), the “Don’t Work at Anduril” campaign led by Snap Alumni Jeff Miller, the importance of real test footage, and why mission-driven cultures are fueling the next generation of frontier companies.
A broad, detailed look at the future of American reindustrialization and the companies shaping it.
AD Portfolio Companies & Categories:
AI: Applied Intuition, Ambient AI
Defense: Anduril, Saronic, Shield AI, Castelion,
Energy: Radiant, Base Power, Exowatt, RigUp
Aerospace: SpaceX, Apex, Northwood, Aerodome, Air Space Intelligence (ASI), Astro Mechanica, Astranis
Manufacturing: Hadrian, Senra
Public Safety: Flock Safety, LongEye, Skydio
Supply Chain: Zipline, Flexport,
Minerals: Mariana Materials, KoBold Metals
David Ulevitch, General Partner, a16z
David invests in enterprise and SaaS software. He has led investments in Anduril, AnyRoad, CX2, Flock Safety, Skydio, Superhuman, Supermove, Vitally, Wingspan, and others.
David was previously the founder & CEO of OpenDNS, a cloud-delivered security service that was acquired by Cisco in 2015 for $635 million. While at Cisco, David was Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Security, a $2.4 billion annual revenue business with more than 5,000 team members, where he oversaw the company’s global cybersecurity strategy, product portfolio, and business. Prior to OpenDNS, David founded EveryDNS, an authoritative DNS service, and grew it into the world’s largest free DNS service. He sold it to Dyn (now Oracle) in 2010.
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) America’s supply-chain vulnerability
(03:28) Most investable wedges: robotics, automation & lights-out factories
(04:11) Rebuilding U.S. minerals & mining capacity (lithium, copper, steel)
(04:29) Applying software to legacy sectors (lumber, metals, production)
(05:20) Energy: Radiant’s microreactor & first new U.S. design in 50+ years
(06:23) Grid resiliency & storage: Base Power, Exowatt
(07:12) Defense innovation: Anduril, Saronic, Castelion
(08:28) Public safety tech: Flock Safety, Long Eye & Skydio
(13:30) Anduril’s “no renders” rule & authentic product culture
(14:27) Inside the “Don’t Work at Anduril” campaign
(19:11) Talent density: references, hiring, firing & magnetic teams
(20:45) Lessons from building OpenDNS: reinvention, team rebuilds & decade-long “overnight success”
(26:00) Kalshi’s future of prediction markets
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5 Key Portfolio Takeaways
1. America’s vulnerability to China spans manufacturing, minerals, and supply chains, creating massive openings across robotics, automation, and materials. This includes everything from lumber & metals to advanced manufacturing & mining.
2. Deterrence matters more than matching China’s shipbuilding capacity. Companies like Castelion and Anduril demonstrate how low-cost, high-capability missile systems change strategic calculus.
3. Energy & nuclear are inflecting, including Radiant’s upcoming first fueled reactor of a new design in 50+ years. Base Power, Exowatt, & nuclear microreactors are redefining resiliency and generation.
4. Aerospace and autonomy are accelerating: satellites, drone-first response, & next-gen air systems are becoming real infrastructure. Apex, Northwood, Skydio, Zipline, ASI, all rebuilding critical layers.
5. Anduril is a standout cultural beacon + the broader AD portfolio shows that mission-driven, high-talent-density teams consistently outperform. Whether in defense, mining, manufacturing or energy, the leaders attract elite talent and capital.
How to Win: Magnetically Attract Talent & Capital
Throughout the conversation, David emphasizes that talent-density and capital magnetism are the two strongest predictors of success in American Dynamism.
Attracting Talent
David says every great company in AD starts with a founder who pulls elite people toward them. The signal is unmistakable in references:
“The absolute best people get just these extraordinarily positive references, like the kind of references where it’s like, Hey, would you wanna work for this person again? And they’re like, oh yeah, I literally would you anything to go work for this person again. I would quit my amazing job I have currently to go work for this person again.”
This is the same quality he sees in leaders at Anduril:
“People would stop what they were doing, their cushy job at Palantir and come to go work for him.”
He repeatedly stresses that founders must always be recruiting:
“You should always have a pipeline of talent because people do leave… I have, I’ll have a founder call me and say, oh, so and so told me they’re leaving. And like, I have no backfill, I have no bench. And it’s like, no, you should always be recruiting.”
Attracting Capital
David is blunt about the capital intensity of AD sectors — missiles, reactors, satellites, autonomy, energy systems:
“These companies are expensive and… they have to be able to magnetically attract capital.”
This is why founders in this ecosystem must command confidence from investors, government partners, industry buyers, and long-term capital allocators. It is the shared trait across companies like Anduril, Radiant, Base Power, Exowatt, Apex, Hadrian, Zipline, and more.
David’s Learnings From Building OpenDNS → Cisco ($635M)
Before American Dynamism or a16z, David spent a decade in the trenches building OpenDNS. He calls it his “10-year overnight success,” — a decade that shaped everything he believes about company building.
Of the lessons he shared, one of the biggest shocks early on was how much he had to reinvent the company, and himself, along the way. OpenDNS actually started as a consumer product, and five years in, they realized the real opportunity was in enterprise security. That wasn’t a simple pivot. In his words:
“At one point we were a consumer company. We pivoted to enterprise halfway through five years in. And totally rebuilt the team because the kind of people that were building a consumer company were totally different than building an enterprise cybersecurity company.”
He had to swap out senior leadership, change the skill sets around him, and basically admit the company needed a different kind of team to become what it was meant to be. And then there’s the timeline. People remember the Cisco acquisition, the big number, the headlines, but David makes it clear it wasn’t obvious from the beginning:
“It took me 10 years to basically have my overnight success.”
No shortcuts. No magical inflection. The endurance to build and rebuild for a decade.
A huge portion of his learning also came after the acquisition, once he stepped into Cisco and ran a massive $2.4 billion ARR business with thousands of people. That’s where he really understood how enterprise and government customers make decisions. They aren’t quick transactions or lightweight choices. They’re slow, complex, high-stakes relationships.
“These are very, very strategic sales processes… you’re gonna work with these people for years on these complex, large, you know, $10 million plus deals.”
And on the customer side:
“Oftentimes, the customer on the other side of the table is sometimes betting their career on picking your solution.”
That changed the way he thought about selling, not as a feature-comparison exercise, but literally as something that affects someone’s livelihood. It forced him to see enterprise buyers as partners, not prospects.
All of it, the pivot, the reinvention, the talent changes, the grind, the long sales cycles, became the backbone of how he thinks about building anything ambitious. Not theory. Not frameworks. Just lived experience from a decade of figuring it out, messing up, fixing it, and eventually selling the company he built.