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Earlier this year, General Motors wrote down $6 billion in electric vehicle investments.

Now the Pentagon wants $74 billion for drones and counterdrone technology.

Between those two numbers is a shift The Electric has been tracking for months. As consumer EV demand stalled, dozens of U.S. battery startups shut down. Then the wars in Ukraine and Iran turned cheap, battery-powered drones into pivotal weapons. The money in electric tech moved with them, toward delivery trucks, drones and warehouse robots, along with the companies that built factories before the orders arrived.

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The Orders Few Saw Coming

A little-known truck maker, Harbinger Motors, just landed a $300 million order from FedEx. Its CEO calls it the largest binding order for electric trucks in history. Drone maker Neros Technologies has won more than $600 million in contracts this year, and its valuation tripled in nine months.

What the two companies have in common helps explain where the money is landing .

The Pentagon’s Drone Race—and a Trump Family Connection

Most of the 19 startups competing for Pentagon drone contracts failed a single hard-and-fast requirement. Two California companies that cleared it came out on top: Neros and a startup founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

A parts maker backed by Donald Trump Jr. supplied components to four of the nine winners, according to Needham and Co.

A Drone Battery Boom Built From the Battery Bust

Amprius, the leading U.S. maker of next-generation battery components, has hired a little-known Indiana startup to make batteries for roughly 60,000 combat drones in the first half of next year.

That startup’s production lines came from two battery makers that went bankrupt . One of them had bought its equipment with a $118 million Department of Energy grant.

The Battery Too Expensive for Cars

A Cambridge chemistry professor built a battery that charges in a minute or two but costs too much for EVs.

Today it powers robots in Walmart warehouses. Her startup, Nyobolt, found a market where downtime is expensive and raised money at a $936 million valuation.

Electric tech didn’t stall along with EV sales. The money moved to buyers with urgent needs, like the Pentagon, FedEx and Walmart, and to the companies that could make products at scale.

The Information’s reporters track the contracts, valuations and factory decisions that show where an industry is actually heading.

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