The 2026 Washington Technology Top 100 rankings are now live for everyone to use in their own research of the federal market’s largest technology and services contractors, plus the industry’s major overarching themes.

For this episode, Nick and Ross huddle up to overview edition number 32 of WT’s flagship project that certainly does have an element of “Who’s Up and Who’s Down” to it.

One question we posed in our breakdown of 2025’s rankings was whether 2026 would look noticeably different in light of the Trump administration’s cuts to contract spending and the federal workforce. The Department of Government Efficiency’s impact to the industry is real, but quantifying it is only part of the discussion about DOGE.

Here are the other items for this episode’s discussion agenda:

Introducing the 2026 Washington Technology Top 100

The 2026 Top 100 shows a market that bent, but did not break

DOGE was government contracting's biggest story of 2025 — and it's not close

WT 360: All about the paths forward for SAIC, Anthropic, resellers and 8(a) companies

How consulting firms acquire to iterate, and sometimes reinvent themselves

GSA wants answers from resellers about markups and equipment maker relationships

CACI's outlook on the government's commercial acquisition push

SAIC's CEO highlights mission IT, engineering work as priorities

Oracle wins $396M federal HR systems overhaul contract

How DHA plans to end Leidos’ run as the military's health record integrator

GSA drops 'disadvantaged' from small business office name

Small businesses face upheaval under the acquisition overhaul and agency cuts

WT 360: Key points (and questions too) from Trump’s fixed-price contracting and AI orders

Astrion hires former Sierra Space CEO Vice as new leader

OMB seeks details from agencies on their commercial buying, or lack thereof

SpaceX's S-1 lays out its government work and market ambitions

SpaceX’s governance structure is built for one person: Elon Musk

The second Trump administration has outpaced the first one in terms of executive orders signed by the president, but this current tenure has put more focus on government contracting than before.

Stephanie Kostro, president of the Professional Services Council, starts out this episode with Nick and Ross by providing historical context to that statement. Then the discussion turns to President Trump’s newest executive orders that focus on fixed-price contracts and artificial intelligence.

Neither of those topics are new to the GovCon ecosystem, but executive orders bring them to the forefront like few other actions can. Kostro explains what contractors are looking to understand from those orders and how they likely will affect work with their customers.

Also on the agenda: the Federal Acquisition Regulation overhaul, small businesses in today’s landscape and the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.

We have taken a deeper dive into the government market’s private investment landscape in recent weeks by hearing the viewpoints of a banker and then a venture capital specialist.

Kirk Konert, managing partner at AE Industrial Partners, joins for this episode to continue the conversation by weighing in on private capital trends across the market and explaining what goes into aligning business decisions with the government priorities.

AE Industrial is also at the heart of the investment action, which in recent months has included initial public offerings of two portfolio companies. Konert takes our Ross Wilkers through that process and the reasoning behind listing Firefly Aerospace and York Space Systems on the public markets.

Konert also provides advice for company owners, founders and architects on how to go about their search for external capital partners. Knowing what you want going in is the starting point.

WT 360: Defense tech investing is cool again, but can it stay that way?

WT 360: A pulse check on GovCon’s capital market landscape

AE Industrial Partners unveils its third investment fund

Firefly captures $868M in IPO proceeds

Firefly seeks software, defense growth with $855M SciTec acquisition

York Space Systems raises $629M in public offering

Anduril, X-Bow and York detail their newest space acquisitions

York Space Systems to acquire terminal maker in $355M transaction

York Space Systems to acquire solar cell maker

L3Harris to sell majority ownership of space propulsion unit to AE Industrial

If it feels like investors everywhere have some curiosity about the defense tech landscape, then it’s because more of them both want to increase their knowledge and sometimes involvement in the ecosystem.

Steve Brotman, founder and managing partner of the growth equity investment firm Alpha Partners, fits into that category as an observer and participant that works with venture capital firms to be involved in promising tech companies.

Steve joins our Ross Wilkers for this episode to answer the questions laid out in the title, namely how it became cool again for investors to get involved with defense tech companies and markers that indicate how long this boom of interest could last.

SpaceX’s initial public offering and corporate VC funds feature in the chat too. Also listen out for Steve’s tips and suggested homework for business leaders to do before venturing out into VC networks.

US investors warm to Ukrainian defense startups—but export laws slow cooperation

Budget would cut Pentagon research by one-third. Can industry compensate?

Meet the startups trying to build military-specific AI

Venture investing is part of the M&A conversation too

The defense tech ecosystem gives investors many opportunities

Public offerings put GovCon in a new spotlight as SpaceX's listing looms

SpaceX's S-1 lays out its government work and market ambitions

SpaceX’s governance structure is built for one person: Elon Musk

SpaceX’s biggest risk factor might be Elon Musk

Lockheed boosts its venture investment fund to $1B

Booz Allen commits $400M to Andreessen Horowitz's late-stage fund

Booz Allen gives big boost to its venture arm

WT 360: For Lockheed's ventures team, its investments are merely step one

WT 360: RTX Ventures casts its net wide and far across an expanding tech ecosystem

WT 360: Booz Allen’s roadmap for collaborating with startups after an investment

WT 360: SAIC Ventures’ methods for investing in and working with tech startups

The window for government contractors, especially those in defense and space technology, to go public is open again as several listings over the past 12 months show and SpaceX’s own offering this year will illustrate.

Dave Khalsa, head of mid-cap defense and government technology investment banking at J.P. Morgan, works on transactions of many different types and observes all of them to help companies in the market figure it all out.

In starting out this episode, Dave explains what all companies can take away from the handful of initial public offerings over the past 12 months and SpaceX’s listing. This is true of whether they plan to go down the IPO path or not.

The rest of the conversation between Dave and our Ross Wilkers focuses on how government priorities shape merger-and-acquisition activities by companies under different ownership models, including private equity and venture capital.

Public offerings put GovCon in a new spotlight as SpaceX's listing looms

HawkEye 360's public offering hauls in $416M

AEVEX fetches $320M in IPO proceeds

Firefly captures $868M in IPO proceeds

York Space Systems raises $629M in public offering

Merlin Labs’ public offering collects $200M to build an AI autopilot for any aircraft

L3Harris to spin off its rocket motor business with the Pentagon as an anchor investor

AeroVironment's tech and business blueprints with BlueHalo now in the fold

Veritas Capital's ninth fund grows to $15.3B

OceanSound Partners hauls in $3.4B for third fund

Arlington Capital fetches $6B for its seventh fund

Government equity investments open a new frontier for industry

Venture investing is part of the M&A conversation too

Anduril hauls in $5B for Series H round

Shield AI closes $1.5B Series G round and moves on acquisition

Saronic wraps up $600M Series C round

Sierra Space and Vast detail their Series C investment rounds

The federal government’s lead agency for domestic cybersecurity and infrastructure protection matters has only completed its first week of being fully back up and running after not being funded for 11 weeks.

David DiMolfetta, cyber reporter at NextGov/FCW, has covered how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has operated through a period that followed losses of nearly one-third of its workforce under this Trump administration.

David joins our Ross Wilkers for this episode to lay out CISA’s path forward with funding in place, plus what the agency’s stakeholders in the private and public sectors should watch out for amid the catchup.

David then breaks down NextGov/FCW’s recent reporting on two major storylines on artificial intelligence policy coming out of the White House that has direct implications for industry.

The second half of their conversation is all about a deep dive article David put together on where industry fits, or may not fit, into the government’s offensive cyber approach.

CISA resources ‘more limited than I would like’ amid shutdown, top official says

IBM security executive emerges as possible contender to lead CISA

Plankey withdraws nomination to lead CISA

Trump admin floats policy language limiting contractor say on agency uses of technology

White House is drafting plans to permit federal Anthropic use

Operational technology providers are feeling ‘annoyance’ at exclusion from Anthropic’s Mythos rollout, sources say

Anthropic’s Glasswing initiative raises questions for US cyber operations

US push to counter hackers draws industry deeper into offensive cyber debate

US lists offensive cyberattacks in counterterrorism strategy

Trump admin will push for ‘long-term’ reauthorization of key cyber data-sharing law

Once again, the U.S. government is accusing China of being among several foreign entities that are looking to steal proprietary information on artificial intelligence models from American companies.

Edward Graham, managing editor and Veterans Affairs Department reporter at NextGov/FCW, discovered a memo the White House sent to federal agencies that warns of distillation campaigns seeking to help create knockoff versions of AI models.

Ed joins our Ross Wilkers for this episode to explain how those campaigns work and, more importantly, how they help illuminate the competition between the U.S. and China to lead the world in AI and robotics tech development.

Ed also provides an update on where things stand with VA’s rollout of a new electronic health record, which has had many fits and starts over the years to say the least.

White House accuses China of ‘deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns’ to steal US AI models

US needs to flesh out strategy to counter China’s robotics advances, lawmakers say

AI capabilities are needed to counter drone threats, senator says

House FY27 VA funding bill allocates $3.4B for EHR rollout

VA resumes EHR rollouts at four Michigan medical sites

Decision authority shifts, the government acting like a venture customer and data transparency being the standard mode of operations are examples of how the old formulas of GovCon business success are becoming outdated.

Davi Hayes, senior director for federal strategy at The Chertoff Group, fields any questions from industry clients seeking to understand those trends and more about how the buying behaviors of their federal customers are changing.

For this episode, Davi joins our Ross Wilkers to lay out some of the answers he found in putting together the article “The Federal Market Has Changed. Has Your Strategy?” The three trends highlighted at the top feature in their discussion.

Davi and Ross also overview how services companies are also part of the equation when “Navigating the New “Production-First” Defense Paradigm,” a second article to read along as they discuss the new world order of GovCon.

Noblis was stood up in 1996 as a science, technology and strategy organization that works with federal agencies on creating and rolling out solutions for some of their most complex problems.

Mile Corrigan, chief executive of Noblis, joins for this episode to go over the firm’s blueprint for its future beyond this milestone year of celebrating its 30th anniversary and how technology transition efforts are at the heart of that vision.

The government wants tech to get from lab to field much quicker than before. In talking with our Ross Wilkers, Corrigan explains some of the keys to making that happen from an industry point-of-view.

Corrigan also lays out how Noblis looks at applied science, the firm’s venture investment activity since starting out on that in 2023 and what it means to be a nonprofit in today’s landscape.

WT 360: The tech and investment threads of Noblis 'Vision 2030'

Noblis' venture arm backs generative AI company

Noblis' venture arm invests in space data tech company

Noblis' venture arm backs digital twin specialist

Noblis looks within for its next chief executive

More code than papers: inside Noblis' turn into that direction

Noblis' evolution told by this foray into solutions

While the 20th century’s Space Race was strictly head-to-head, the 21st century variant is much more complex and multipolar as private businesses and nations are looking to lead in this domain.

Kevin Kelly, chief executive of Arcfield, joins for this episode to go over how this systems engineering outfit is looking at the landscape through the lens of a company that has both government and private sector customers.

In talking with Ross Wilkers, Kelly explains the art and science of managing space as it gets more and more crowded thanks to plummeting launch costs.

The Golden Dome missile defense initiative, data centers in space and Arcfield’s acquisition activity over the past three years are also on the agenda.

Arcfield enters the seas via acquisition

Arcfield adds small satellite skills with new acquisition

Arcfield acquires digital twin provider

WT 360: All about Arcfield's strategy and investment thesis