Forbes recently published a feature on how veterans are driving the U.S. defense technology sector’s unprecedented investment surge. Since 2022, venture capitalists have poured a record $32 billion into defense tech, with the number of new defense companies founded each year nearly quadrupling. The article explores why so many of these startups are being built by ex-military founders — drawing on their firsthand understanding of how the Pentagon operates and what today’s battlefield actually needs — and how a tight-knit network of veteran entrepreneurs is helping fund and mentor the next wave of founders.
One of the founders featured is Blake Hall — CEO of ID.me, a company held within our USO I portfolio. Hall is a former Army infantry officer who struggled in 2011 to raise funding for TroopSwap, a classifieds marketplace built for military families. His breakthrough came through the veteran network itself: venture capitalist Kelly Perdew introduced him to successful West Point and Annapolis graduates at an Army-Navy game tailgate, rallying early investment commitments on the spot. Hall has since credited his military background with unlocking that trust and support.
That early venture evolved into ID.me, an identity verification platform now valued at around $2 billion following its most recent funding round. ID.me now has over 172m+ users across the United States (more than half the US adult population) and recently signed a US$1bn contract with the US Department of Treasury for individual IRS access.
Hall’s story is used as a case study of how veteran-to-veteran networks are accelerating founder success across the broader defense tech boom — and a nice validation of the thesis behind our own investment.
You can read the full Forbes feature here: Battlefield To Boardroom: The Veteran Founders Riding Defense Tech’s $32 Billion Boom
