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A16Z American Dynamism is using this launch to preview three portfolio companies working on the physical foundations of American industrial and defense capacity: Ulysses, Mariana Minerals, and Radiant. The teaser points to forthcoming content and public rollouts from each, aimed at founders, operators, and investors tracking dual-use hard tech. Ulysses is building a small, autonomous underwater vehicle designed to outperform the primes at a fraction of the cost, founded by Akhil, Will, Colm, and Jamie, who came from Ireland after cutting their teeth building drones there. The platform is modular, letting operators add batteries, propellers, GPU modules, or mil-spec hardware through standardized ports depending on the mission, and the Department of War has come to Ulysses for solutions, with a vertically integrated manufacturing facility and fresh Series A capital to scale. Mariana Minerals is a systems company building the software layer that brings real-time intelligence to mining, spanning capital project delivery, mining operations, and chemical refining. Three sites covering lithium, copper, and nickel are already under development in the United States, with the first refined product projected to be delivered by year's end. CEO Turner Caldwell previously led Tesla's metals and minerals team, CTO Juan Lozano scaled ML systems at Affirm and Kite, and CFO Baker Tilney founded an integrated energy company later sold to Vitol. Radiant, founded in 2020 by former SpaceX engineer Doug Bernauer, is developing portable nuclear microreactors intended to replace diesel generators in remote and off-grid settings. For a directory audience, the through line is what a16z's American Dynamism practice has been arguing for years, that undersea autonomy, critical mineral supply, and distributed power generation are the constraints on Western industrial and military capacity. Watching how these three companies ship, contract, and hire in the coming weeks is a useful lens on where the thesis is actually converting into revenue and deployed hardware.

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