Integrate raises $17M to move defense project management into the 21st century

Source: TechCrunch

John Conafay, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, has spent most of his career leading business development at public and private aerospace companies, including Spire, Astranis, and ABL Space Systems. At each company, Conafay ran into the same software hurdle: collaborating on government contracts was a logistical mess that forced his teams and their federal counterparts to rely on a tedious back‑and‑forth of PDFs and Excel files. The bottleneck was always the same—most project‑management tools like Atlassian’s Jira and Asana simply weren’t secure enough to meet the government’s strict security standards.

Founding Integrate

In early 2022, Conafay launched Integrate, a collaboration platform designed specifically to allow private companies, the U.S. Department of Defense, and other government agencies to work jointly on classified, multi‑entity projects. Last year, the Seattle‑based startup won a $25 million, five‑year contract from the U.S. Space Force.

Funding Round

The validation from a major agency helped attract venture capital. Wesley Chan, co‑founder and managing partner at FPV Ventures, led Integrate’s $17 million Series A. Chan, known for early bets on Canva, Robinhood, Plaid, and more than 20 other unicorns, told TechCrunch he invested because Integrate solves a big problem for the government and the private companies that serve it.

Changing Attitudes Toward DoD Sales

Until recently, the tech sector largely shunned selling to the U.S. Department of Defense, viewing it as immoral to create products for the military. That sentiment shifted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the growing perception of China as an adversary. The change opens the door for other project‑management vendors to target government customers, though Conafay argues it will be technically difficult for them to catch up to Integrate.

“If you don’t build something from the ground up with government requirements, you can’t really go back and re‑architect software that exists for government purposes,” he told TechCrunch.

Product Differentiation

According to Conafay, what sets Integrate apart from civilian‑focused competitors is its ability to let different organizations simultaneously and securely collaborate on massive project schedules while keeping sensitive details hidden from other participants. Integrate is designed to handle coordination of mammoth, multi‑year mega‑projects—such as the F‑35 Lightning II program or the James Webb Space Telescope—where thousands of partners must stay in sync.

While he was careful not to reveal too much about customers beyond the Space Force, Conafay noted that some of the startup’s work for that branch involves deployments of large rockets. “They have to coordinate tens of satellites on a single launch across dozens of missions,” he said. “The complexity is pretty extreme, and they use us to coordinate those things.”

Future Growth

Integrate plans to expand by selling its software to other branches of the U.S. military, including the Navy, the Army, and the intelligence community, as well as to the private companies that serve them.