At ARTIS Ventures, we believe that innovation at the intersection of security, intelligence, and advanced technology remains one of the most under-leveraged levers for outsized impact. From semiconductors and space exploration to the Internet, history shows that many of the world’s most transformative technologies originated from defense investment.

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Yet for decades, systemic friction and procurement bottlenecks have kept the most capable startups — the ones best positioned to deliver these breakthroughs — at arm’s length from government adoption. Our conviction in this space is not new: over a decade ago, ARTIS was an early investor in Palantir, recognizing the profound role software would play in reshaping how intelligence and defense agencies operate. That early bet not only reaffirmed our thesis around dual-use innovation but also gave us deep insight into how mission-driven software companies can become essential to national security, commercial, and consumer infrastructure.

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We saw something similar in Second Front Systems — a team born from battlefield experience, forged in cyber warfare, and driven to rewrite the story of how the United States (and its allies) adopt commercial innovation. That’s why ARTIS Ventures led the company’s $8M seed round in January 2021, backing a vision to accelerate the government’s ability to deploy secure software at speed.

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Today, as the company scales and secures a major Series B Financing, we’re proud to reflect on how far they’ve come — and why their mission is more critical than ever.

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The Legacy Tech Crisis in Government

The U.S. federal government spends over $100B annually on IT, yet in 2022, more than half of this spend went to maintaining outdated systems — some as old as 50+ years — while only a fraction supported cloud modernization. Government gears grind slowly and startups can’t afford to wait.

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Startups + Defense: The Participation Gap

Despite being 73% of DoD vendors in 2021, small businesses captured only 20% of total defense funding, and their participation has been shrinking. According to the DoD, the defense industrial base has lost over 17,000 companies in the last decade.

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Why? The ATO (Authority to Operate) process.

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Getting software certified for government networks is like running a high-stakes marathon — multiple stages, third-party audits, security tests, and no guaranteed finish line. The FedRAMP framework tried to streamline this, but adoption remains slow: only 320 vendors certified over 12+ years.

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Second Front: The Fast Lane to Deployment

Second Front’s platform, Game Warden, is flipping this narrative.

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“Second Front is breaking down one of the most formidable barriers in national security — the speed and cost of getting cutting-edge software into the hands of government users,” said Austin Walne, Senior Partner at ARTIS Ventures.

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Game Warden is a DevSecOps platform purpose-built for government deployment. It reduces the ATO timeline from 24 months to just 60–90 days, slashing costs and complexity. It does this by:

• Automating security hardening for containers
  
• Offering multi-cloud, multi-classification deployment options
  
• Including a built-in SRE team for Day 2 operations, eliminating the need for vendors to build bespoke DevOps teams
  
• Supporting continuous deployment without repeated recertification

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“In just a few years,” Austin continued, “the team has transformed how the DoD and its allies can access and deploy commercial innovation.”

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For vendors, this means no more betting the company on a months-long certification process before a single contract. For government buyers, it means faster access to critical tech that makes soldiers, analysts, and decision-makers more effective and secure.

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Founders Who’ve Lived the Problem

Second Front’s origin story is rooted in real-world national security stakes. Co-founders Peter Dixon, Mark Butler, and Nate Hughes served in the U.S. Marine Corps, witnessing firsthand how software bottlenecks translate into battlefield vulnerabilities.

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They’ve since built a leadership team that reads like a who’s who of national security tech transformation:

• Tyler Sweatt, CEO – former Army officer, federal sales operator
  
• Enrique Oti, CTO – founder of Kessel Run, the Air Force’s famed agile software unit
  
• Michael Neumann, CPO – former Chief Data Scientist of the CIA
  
  

Their combined experience brings credibility, customer empathy, and unmatched execution power.

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Why ARTIS Invested — and Why We Still Are

At ARTIS, we back scientists, technologists, and operators rethinking massive, systemic problems with bold new architectures. In Second Front, we saw:

• A wedge into the single hardest problem in defense software adoption: ATO
  
• A platform vision, not a services band-aid
  
• A mission-driven team that understands the battlefield, the bureaucracy, and the buyer

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This is not just about defense. It’s about democratizing access to public sector markets for the most innovative tech companies — in cybersecurity, AI/ML, analytics, and infrastructure — and ensuring that the best tools get into the hands of the people who protect our nations.

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“We believe Second Front is positioned to become critical infrastructure for modern defense technology, and we’re proud to continue backing their mission to strengthen security through software” said Stuart Peterson, Founder and General Partner at ARTIS Ventures.

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We were proud to lead Second Front’s $8M seed round in January 2021, and we remain steadfast in our belief that "bits over bullets" is the future of defense.