Want to make money? Start building data centers. Or build batteries to power data centers. Or: circle the defense.
This is not financial advice, but it is certainly what seems to be working for public markets and private investors lately. Ford’s new energy storage business — a fraction of the size of Tesla’s and not ready until next year — helped its stock jump more than it has in years. Redwood Materials has raised $425 million in green-chip companies like Google and Nvidia by turning to data center energy storage. Cerebras just released one of the hottest IPOs of 2026.
Investments in defense startups continue to pour in, with Anduril raising another $5 billion this week. It seems that any company with even a remote chance of grabbing government contracts tries to do just that.
Which brings us to GoPro.
The action camera company has survived a lot over the years. For a while in the 2010s, the term “GoPro killer” was almost synonymous with “Tesla killer” or “iPhone killer,” with people clamoring for everything from a TomTom action camera to Google Clips (remember that?) to dethrone the California company that invented the category.
Survival does not mean success, however, and GoPro has been struggling of late. Sales fell, losses rose, and the stock price settled at about $1 over the past two years. So, surprisingly, last month GoPro announced a plan to “explore opportunities in the defense and aerospace market.”
It makes a certain amount of sense for a company that combines high-quality image quality with enough durability to withstand a motorcycle crash, or a fall from space. And the pivot it was enough to nearly double the company’s stock price for several days. But that, too, returned to Earth. It seems the “pivot to defense” idea isn’t as bulletproof as the GoPro cameras, after all.
You can guess where this is going. On Thursday, GoPro announced that it has hired investment banker Houlihan Lokey to help explore “potential sales and other strategic options.” The company’s board of directors said it recently received “several unsolicited strategic inquiries from groups in various sectors including defense, consumer and financial,” which is a lot of words you can effectively say: “Uh-oh.”
This isn’t the first time GoPro has considered selling; Founder and CEO Nick Woodman was briefly at the table back in 2018.
But now things are getting worse for the company. Not only are its finances crumbling, the company announced last month that it will lay off a quarter of its workforce, which has already dropped to just over 600 workers after hiring about 1,500.
GoPro was a technology darling 15 years ago. But like many of us, it now finds itself navigating a changing world. It’s no surprise that the Pentagon’s big budget is seen as a viable option amid the churn.
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