Silicon Valley is doubling down on defense as geopolitical tensions rise and appetite for modernizing warfare grows. And while many of the startups garnering large valuations are focused on hardware and weaponry — think Anduril, Shield AI, and Skydio — Rune Technologies wants to tackle AI-enabled software for military logistics.
“The U.S. military runs on Excel spreadsheets and whiteboards and manual processes right now to execute logistics operations,” co-founder David Tuttle told TechCrunch. “Logistics is never the sexiest part of the military. The technology industry emphasis is on how do we make things go boom? How do we build great weapons systems?”
Logistics, Tuttle says, usually falls behind when it comes to innovation. And he should know. Earlier in his career, he was a field artillery officer in the U.S. Army. Later, he served with the Joint Special Operations Command before going on to work at Anduril, where he met his co-founder, ex-Meta software engineer Peter Goldsborough. The two founded Rune after seeing how much modern warfare has changed the scale and pace at which armies have to sustain force.
“Ukraine is a sad example of the expenditures of munitions, the consumption of supplies, and those types of things in a near-peer adversary conflict — they will break human-centric and analog-centric processes,” said Tuttle.
