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Welcome to Techno's briefing. It's Monday, September 11th. I'm Zoe Thomas for the Wall Street

The Pentagon has a plan to counter U.S. adversaries, including China, and it requires

technology that is small, smart, and cheap. It would be a big change for the Defense Department,

where bureaucracy typically means it takes a long time to develop and deploy cutting-edge tech.

Our National Security Correspondent Nancy Yusuf is going to join us to talk about the artificial

intelligence systems that could protect U.S. interests across air, land, and sea.

First, though, there are more signs that tech startups are struggling to raise money.

According to CrunchBase, the median time between seed and series A rounds, typically the point

when a startup goes from being an idea to a fledgling business, has gotten longer this year,

stretching to 25 months from 21 months last year. It's a sign that economic uncertainty,

high interest rates, and a correction after the pandemic boom in tech investing,

are now biting early-stage startups. But our WSJ Venture Capital Reporter,

Angus Loten says it's unclear where things go from here.

We've been hearing all kinds of predictions in the past year that there's going to be a wave

of down-round, so there's going to be a wave of startup closings, or there's going to be

this sudden surge in acquisitions to buy these lower-price startups. None of that has happened.

Right now, things look a little sunnier than they did six months ago. The public tech market is

doing much better than it was last year, certainly. That's good news for tech startups, because now the

conditions to list publicly are much better than they were. That moves the whole pipeline forward,

...