As Elon Musk and Vivek Ra­maswamy pro­ceed with their new De­part­ment of Gov­ern­ment Ef­fi­cien­cy under the in­com­ing Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, some are see­ing it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for small­er de­fense tech com­pa­nies to forge new part­ner­ships with the De­part­ment of De­fense. While ques­tions re­main about how DOGE might af­fect these com­pa­nies, it’s also a re­minder that the world of de­fense tech can be a pros­per­ous path for vet­er­ans seek­ing a place in busi­ness after their time in the mil­i­tary. EdgeRun­ner AI co-founder and CEO Tyler Salts­man joins this week’s episode of War­rior Money to talk about these op­por­tu­ni­ties, and the work his own com­pa­ny is doing in the de­fense tech space. Salts­man co-found­ed EdgeRun­ner AI after serv­ing in the Army. The com­pa­ny de­vel­ops gen­er­a­tive AI tech­nol­o­gy for “the edge” — pro­grams that can run lo­cal­ly on de­vices rather than re­ly­ing on in­ter­net or cloud ac­cess, mak­ing them safer for mil­i­tary and de­fense teams to use. The com­pa­ny launched ear­li­er this year with $5.5 mil­lion in seed fund­ing. Salts­man ex­plains that AI tech­nol­o­gy of­fers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to stan­dard­ize in­tel­li­gence, and can serve as a tool for sol­diers to con­sult in the field. “With that base­line in­tel­li­gence, I think it al­lows us to be on the same page bet­ter,” he says. How­ev­er, an on­go­ing ob­sta­cle in de­fense tech is at­tract­ing in­vestors will­ing to take risks. “I don’t have a tra­di­tion­al tech back­ground like an AI founder typ­i­cal­ly does, with a PhD in com­put­er sci­ence and all these ac­co­lades,” he says. “But in our world, you don’t need that sort of back­ground. What you need to do is show­case you can lead, you can build a team, you have a vi­sion, and that you can ex­e­cute. To Salts­man, those are all traits that are al­ready in­stilled in peo­ple through the mil­i­tary. “I think as vet­er­ans, we’re wired that way,” he ex­plains. “We're think­ing in re­verse time­lines. We're think­ing in ‘What prob­lem are we solv­ing’? We're think­ing ‘What is our mis­sion’? And we're think­ing ‘What are the tools that we need to get there’? And that's re­al­ly how you run a busi­ness and how you build prod­ucts. “I would chal­lenge vet­er­ans to get out there, have an idea, and go ex­e­cute,” he adds. Salts­man cov­ers his own jour­ney and the pro­fes­sion­al pos­si­bil­i­ties for fel­low vet­er­ans in his con­ver­sa­tion on War­rior Money. Host­ed by for­mer Con­gress­man Patrick Mur­phy and vet­er­an in­vestor Dan Kunze, Yahoo Fi­nance’s War­rior Money is a week­ly vod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to up­lift­ing mil­i­tary vet­er­ans tran­si­tion­ing into civil­ian life. Through in­sights from fel­low vet­er­ans and high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, Mur­phy and Kunze are help­ing set vets up for suc­cess through fi­nan­cial ed­u­ca­tion and in­spi­ra­tion. About Yahoo Fi­nance: Yahoo Fi­nance pro­vides free stock tick­er data, up-to-date news, port­fo­lio man­age­ment re­sources, com­pre­hen­sive mar­ket data, ad­vanced tools, and more in­for­ma­tion to help you man­age your fi­nan­cial life. - Get the lat­est news and data at finance.​yahoo.​com - Down­load the Yahoo Fi­nance app on Apple (https://​apple.​co/​3Rten0R) or An­droid (https://​bit.​ly/​3t8UnXO) - Fol­low Yahoo Fi­nance on so­cial: X: http://​twitter.​com/​YahooFinance In­sta­gram: https://​www.​instagram.​com/​yahoofinance/?​hl=en Tik­Tok: https://​www.​tiktok.​com/@​yahoofinance?​lang=en Face­book: https://​www.​facebook.​com/​yahoofinance/​ LinkedIn: https://​www.​linkedin.​com/​company/​yahoo-finance #de­fense #mil­i­tary #ya­hoo­fi­nance