Even GoPro is pivoting to defense - BERITAJA

Want to make money? Start building information centers. Or build batteries to powerfulness information centers. Or: pivot to defense.

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

Investment successful defense startups continues to move in, pinch Anduril raising another $5 billion this week. It seems that immoderate institution pinch a distant chance astatine nabbing authorities contracts is trying to do conscionable that.

Which brings america to GoPro.

The action camera institution has survived a batch complete the years. For a while during the 2010s, the word “GoPro killer” was almost arsenic communal arsenic “Tesla killer” aliases “iPhone killer,” pinch group claiming everything from a TomTom action 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 value fundamentally flatlined astatine about $1 2 years ago. So, surprise, past period GoPro announced a scheme to “explore defense and aerospace marketplace opportunities.”

It makes a definite magnitude of consciousness for a institution that combines top-tier image value pinch capable durability to withstand a motorcycle crash, aliases a autumn from space. And the pivot was enough to about double the company’s banal value 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 could possibly conjecture wherever this is going. On Thursday, GoPro announced it hired finance slope Houlihan Lokey to help evaluate a “potential waste and different strategical alternatives.” The company’s committee of board said it precocious received “several unsolicited inbound strategical inquiries from parties crossed various sectors including defense, user and financial,” which is simply a batch of words to efficaciously say: “Uh-oh.”

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

But things are surely now much dire for the company. Not only 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 for illustration truthful galore of us, it now finds itself navigating a much volatile world. It’s nary astonishment that a massively ballooning Pentagon budget looks for illustration a viable way done the churn.