Sift's $42 million Series B is interesting not just for the company that raised it, but for the syndicate that backed it. StepStone led the round, with GV (Google Ventures), Riot Ventures, Fika Ventures, and CIV all participating. Read together, the cap table is a useful snapshot of where defense-tech infrastructure investing is in 2026.
StepStone (Lead Investor)
StepStone is a global private markets firm that has steadily built a presence in technology growth investing, including increasing exposure to defense and dual-use companies. Its decision to lead Sift's Series B is meaningful for two reasons.
First, leads of this size in infrastructure-layer defense-tech companies typically come from firms with the conviction and balance sheet to underwrite long-cycle technical bets. StepStone's role positions Sift alongside the more traditional software-infrastructure investments that institutional limited partners have historically been comfortable with — but in a defense-adjacent context.
Second, StepStone leading a round in an autonomy-infrastructure company sends a signal to the broader market: the institutional capital base is increasingly willing to treat defense-tech infrastructure as a normal software investment, with normal underwriting frameworks, rather than a specialty allocation.
GV (Google Ventures)
GV brings deep technical pattern recognition, a long history of backing data-infrastructure companies, and a portfolio that spans both consumer and enterprise software. Its participation in Sift's Series B places the company in the same orbit as a long list of GV-backed infrastructure successes, and brings credibility around the data-platform thesis that sits at the core of the product.
GV's involvement also matters for the talent narrative. Engineering leaders at GV-backed companies tend to take note when GV adds a new portfolio company in their domain — and Sift's hiring plans (doubling the team to roughly 140 people, with a new SF office) depend in part on attracting senior infrastructure talent that GV's network can help reach.
Riot Ventures
Riot Ventures has built a deliberate practice around backing "tough tech" — companies operating at the intersection of hardware, software, and defense. Its participation in Sift's Series B continues a thesis that the firm has been articulating for several years: that the next wave of category-defining defense-tech companies will be infrastructure plays, not just platform plays.
Riot's portfolio orientation is well aligned with Sift's customer base — companies like CX2 and various drone manufacturers sit in exactly the same defense-tech adjacent territory.
Fika Ventures
Fika Ventures, an early-stage firm with a track record in enterprise software and B2B platforms, completes the syndicate's commercial-software credentials. Fika's involvement reinforces the framing of Sift as a true B2B infrastructure company — one whose customer relationships, contract structures, and growth motion are recognizable to any institutional B2B SaaS investor, even if the underlying domain (autonomous hardware) is unusual.
CIV
CIV's participation rounds out the syndicate with additional capital and network depth. The firm's presence is a useful indicator that defense-tech infrastructure is no longer a niche occupied by a handful of specialist funds — multiple categories of investor are now comfortable underwriting growth-stage rounds in this space.
[STATS]
Round Size | $42M
Round Type | Series B
Lead | StepStone
Co-Investors | GV, Riot, Fika, CIV
[/STATS]
What the Syndicate Tells Us
Three patterns are visible in the Sift cap table that map onto a broader shift in venture capital around defense-tech and autonomy infrastructure:
1. **Infrastructure beats platforms in this cycle.** Several of the largest recent defense-tech rounds have gone not to weapons systems or autonomous platforms themselves, but to the infrastructure layer that makes them work. Sift's syndicate fits squarely into that pattern.
2. **Mainstream capital is comfortable here.** A few years ago, a defense-adjacent infrastructure round of this size would have been led by a specialist defense-tech fund. Today, generalist private-markets investors like StepStone are willing to lead — a meaningful shift in the institutional posture toward the category.
3. **Software discipline applied to physical autonomy.** GV and Fika Ventures bring decades of B2B software underwriting discipline to a company whose customers are physical-hardware operators. That combination — software discipline applied to defense and autonomy — is increasingly the dominant frame for fundable companies in the space.
[HIGHLIGHT]The Sift syndicate is a small but clear marker of how defense-tech investing has evolved. It is no longer the exclusive territory of specialist funds; it is increasingly a mainstream infrastructure-software opportunity that institutional investors are willing to underwrite alongside their conventional B2B SaaS bets.[/HIGHLIGHT]
Implications for Founders
For founders building infrastructure-layer companies in defense and autonomy, the lesson of the Sift round is straightforward. The capital is there, and it spans a wider range of investor types than ever before. But the bar is also clear: investors are paying for differentiated technical depth (Sift's SpaceX-derived telemetry expertise), real customer revenue across multiple verticals (ULA, Astranis, K2 Space, Parallel Systems, CX2 and others), and a credible plan to scale operations (the doubling of the engineering team and the new SF office).
Founders who can show all three are increasingly likely to find leads — not just from defense-specialist funds, but from the broader institutional infrastructure-software investor base.