Even GoPro is pivoting to defense

Want to marque money? Start gathering information centers. Or physique batteries to powerfulness information centers. Or: pivot to defense.

This is not fiscal advice, but it’s surely what seems to beryllium winning implicit nationalist markets and backstage investors lately. Ford’s nascent vigor retention concern — a fraction successful size to Tesla’s and won’t beryllium acceptable until adjacent twelvemonth — helped its banal leap more than it has successful years. Redwood Materials raised $425 cardinal from bluish spot companies similar Google and Nvidia by pivoting to information halfway vigor storage. Cerebras conscionable pulled disconnected 1 of the hottest IPOs of 2026.

Investment successful defence startups continues to determination in, with Anduril raising another $5 billion this week. It seems that immoderate institution with a distant accidental astatine nabbing authorities contracts is trying to bash conscionable that.

Which brings america to GoPro.

The enactment camera institution has survived a batch implicit the years. For a portion during the 2010s, the word “GoPro killer” was astir arsenic communal arsenic “Tesla killer” oregon “iPhone killer,” with radical claiming everything from a TomTom enactment camera to Google’s Clips (remember that?) would dethrone the California institution that invented the category.

Survival does not needfully mean success, though, and GoPro has struggled of late. Sales are down, losses are up, and its banal terms fundamentally flatlined astatine astir $1 2 years ago. So, surprise, past period GoPro announced a program to “explore defence and aerospace marketplace opportunities.”

It makes a definite magnitude of consciousness for a institution that combines top-tier representation prime with capable durability to withstand a motorcycle crash, oregon a autumn from space. And the pivot was enough to astir treble the company’s banal terms for a fewer days. But that, too, has fallen backmost to Earth. It seems the “pivot to defense” thought is not arsenic bulletproof arsenic GoPro’s cameras, aft all.

You tin possibly conjecture wherever this is going. On Thursday, GoPro announced it hired concern slope Houlihan Lokey to help evaluate a “potential merchantability and different strategical alternatives.” The company’s committee of directors said it precocious received “several unsolicited inbound strategical inquiries from parties crossed assorted sectors including defense, user and financial,” which is simply a batch of words to efficaciously say: “Uh-oh.”

It’s not the archetypal clip GoPro has considered a sale; laminitis and CEO Nick Woodman it was briefly on the array back successful 2018.

But things are surely present much dire for the company. Not lone are its financials deteriorating, the institution announced past period that it’s laying disconnected a 4th of its workforce, which has already shrunk to a small much than 600 workers aft erstwhile employing arsenic galore arsenic 1,500.

GoPro was a tech darling 15 years ago. But similar truthful galore of us, it present finds itself navigating a much volatile world. It’s nary astonishment that a massively ballooning Pentagon budget looks similar a viable way done the churn.