The NatSec100 has grown significantly in both scope and influence since the first release in 2023. In 2024, the NatSec100 drew substantial engagement from policymakers, investors, and national security leaders - with coverage across major media outlets, industry webinars, and thought leadership platforms including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times.

In 2025, Silicon Valley Defense Group returns with the same quantitative methodology, now bolstered by three years of comparative data. Our proprietary scoring calculation was developed in partnership with Franklin Templeton and Balyasny Asset Management. The ranking reflects weighted, quantitative factors that allow us to comparably analyze each company in an objective way, irrespective of sector, growth stage, hardware v. software, etc.

We fully acknowledge the limitations: our model relies entirely on publicly available data, and does not capture the operational impact or classified work of many companies, in part due to the lack of reliable, standardized reporting. Our ranking does not accommodate company valuations. Rather, we index on momentum. That said, within these bounds, the NatSec100 remains a fair, repeatable, thoroughly researched, and comparative proxy for venture-backed momentum.

This year’s report is not just a snapshot — it is a multi-year lens on the evolving momentum of the national security innovation base. With three years of data now in hand, SVDG is not just naming high-performing companies — we are surfacing the structural gaps, patterns of growth, and lessons learned across the national security innovation base.

Our Top 100 companies are certifiably well-positioned to fill critical technology and capability gaps for the defense industrial base. Collectively, the NatSec100 highlights momentum within the world of venture-backed growth and provides a reasonable foundation upon which to explore the state of the Ecosystem.

The NatSec100 is a powerful diagnostic tool, offering a quantitative snapshot of the entities building, scaling, and delivering within the national security innovation ecosystem. We are optimistic that this analysis will continue to inform policy, enhance investment strategies, and inspire a proactive approach to innovation adoption across the defense enterprise.