Andreessen Horowitz Adds Connor Love to American Dynamism Team

Andreessen Horowitz offices in San Francisco.

Giant venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has hired defense and space technology investor Connor Love, adding a military veteran and prominent VC to a team focused on startups critical to US interests.

Love joins from Lightspeed, where he helped with investments in defense tech darlings Anduril Industries Inc. and Saronic Technologies Inc. At a16z, as the firm is nicknamed, Love will work as a general partner on the American Dynamism team alongside Katherine Boyle and Erin Price-Wright, all under David Ulevitch.

Venture capital is pouring into defense tech, with US startups in the sector raising more through the first half of 2026 than in all of last year, according to PitchBook. It’s a sharp reversal from a decade ago, when many venture firms avoided defense investments altogether and viewed the sector as outside the traditional Silicon Valley playbook.

Defense is a significant part of what a16z calls its American Dynamism practice, but the thesis extends more broadly to companies building critical industries — from manufacturing and aerospace to supply chains, energy and public infrastructure. The firm started the practice in 2022 and has since raised two funds, totaling almost $1.8 billion.

“What convinced us wasn’t the track record, strong as it is. It was that Connor deeply believes the same thing we do: Some of the most important companies of this decade will be the ones serving the national interest, and that serving the country and generating extraordinary returns are not in tension,”Ulevitch wrote in a blog post.

Before entering venture capital, Love served six years as an active-duty US Army officer. A West Point graduate and Army captain, he held a range of operational, strategic and policy roles and was deployed to northern Iraq as a military adviser working alongside US and Iraqi-Kurdish forces. He joined Lightspeed in 2020, where he’s since invested in defense, space, manufacturing and autonomous technology companies.

Love starts his new role effective Monday and will be based in San Francisco.