VALIDATED, THEN STUCK
The National Security Fund directly addresses a critical and immediate dual failure in the U.S. innovation ecosystem: national security startups need money, and philanthropists have money but don't deploy it into this vital sector. Thousands of companies developing essential technologies—from advanced materials to resilient energy—are stuck in the "Valley of Death," the funding chasm that kills innovation. The brutal truth is that only 16% of companies that receive early-stage DOD investment contracts ever make it to the procurement phase, proving that conventional finance fails to support the scale required for factory builds and equipment purchases. Meanwhile, America’s foundations and Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) hold over $1.9 trillion in assets, yet the allocation to scaling defense technology is effectively zero. This misalignment leaves the nation strategically vulnerable, reliant on foreign supply chains, and losing its technological edge to faster-moving adversaries.
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We fix this failure by acting as the strategic bridge between mission and capital, creating a dedicated, high-impact channel for philanthropic engagement. The National Security Fund pools grants from foundations and DAFs to deploy specialized non-dilutive financing (like our Impact-Development Debt) directly to validated companies, ensuring the capital serves the mission first. This structure enables us to provide the crucial, large-scale funding needed for scaling. Our model then ensures the capital is returned and recycled when milestones are hit, creating a self-sustaining flywheel, The Circle, that turns national security into a scalable, attractive asset class. We eliminate the bureaucratic committee delays typical of traditional philanthropy, ensuring capital is deployed in days, not months.
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The reason this matters now is the immediate and transformative scale achieved by mobilizing this capital. If just 1% of annual charitable giving were directed toward this effort, it would unlock nearly $6 billion per year. This massive infusion would effectively triple the dedicated private funding available to national security startups. By bringing this level of clean, patient capital to bear, we eliminate the Valley of Death, accelerate the deployment of vital American technology by years, and guarantee that our national security infrastructure is protected and domestically manufactured.
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