When Andreessen Horowitz announced last week that it would open a new regional headquarters for its $1.2B defense technology investment fund, it selected a location far from its base in Silicon Valley, the hub of venture capital. The office will be nowhere close to the Pentagon, through which tens of billions of dollars flow to private companies every year.

The headquarters for the American Dynamism fund will be in West Palm Beach, making it the latest in a string of national security-related businesses to establish an office in the shadow of Mar-a-Lago.

South Florida, and particularly Palm Beach County, offers an edge to defense companies that its competitors can’t touch: a growing cluster of billionaires and finance offices and powerful government officials, including the president, when they’re away from Washington, D.C.

“It's an alignment of the stars, if you will,” West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James said. 

“The fact that there’s more money being spent, proximity to the president of the U.S. and his family, certainly doesn’t hurt,” he added.

At least nine defense companies have chosen to open locations in South Florida over the last year, according to a Bisnow analysis of press releases and Cushman & Wakefield data. Seven of those companies signed leases for space in Palm Beach County.

Nuclear reactor startup Ampera announced in December that it would establish a 100K SF headquarters at an office park in Palm Beach Gardens to support research and development, engineering, manufacturing and assembly operations.

Quantum computing systems, software and services company D-Wave Quantum moved its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to a 34K SF office at the Boca Raton Innovation Center in January. Blue Ops, which builds autonomous sea vessels, opened an 11,400 SF office and showroom in West Palm Beach earlier this year with plans to “inject millions annually into the local industry,” according to a release.

Elsewhere in South Florida, Palantir Technologies, which has worked with the White House on data collection initiatives, relocated this year from its Colorado headquarters to a coworking space in Aventura.

And last week, Menlo Park, California-based Andreessen Horowitz, which has more than $100B under management, said it would open American Dynamism's regional HQ at a Related Ross office tower on Okeechobee Boulevard by early next year.

“It is critical for our fund to have a presence wherever ambitious founders are tackling consequential problems,” Andreessen Horowitz general partner and co-founder of the American Dynamism practice Katherine Boyle said in a statement.

“Our decision to establish a regional headquarters in West Palm Beach reflects our belief that many of tomorrow’s breakthrough American Dynamism companies will be built here in Florida,” she added. “We want to be on the ground alongside the founders building them.”

As home to three of the nation's 11 major combatant commands, more than 20 active military installations and among the top five states to receive the most federal defense funding, Florida has long held an appeal for defense business.

But a top consideration for defense companies surveying South Florida is the ability to get in front of the country’s most powerful people, said John Boyd Jr., principal of Boca Raton-based site selection company The Boyd Co.

“They want proximity to the president, the winter White House and all the dealmakings that happen, not just at Mar-a-Lago but also in Doral,” Boyd said.

President Donald Trump had spent 102 of the first 512 days, or nearly 20%, of his presidency at Mar-a-Lago as of June, making it his most visited of his properties, according to watchdog group Citizens for Responsibity and Ethics in Washington. Trump often visits his family's other local properties, like his Doral or West Palm Beach golf courses, during trips to Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s family and colleagues have established deep business ties in the region. Donald Trump Jr. is a partner at Palm Beach-based investment firm 1789 Capital, which invests in defense contractors like Anduril, Hadrian and Axiom Space.

Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s head of artificial intelligence efforts, lives in Miami, and Jared Kushner, the U.S. special envoy for peace and the president’s son-in-law, leads Sunny Isles Beach-based private equity and investment firm Affinity Partners. 

WatchGuard Technologies CEO Joe Smolarski told Bisnow the proximity of big players “absolutely” played a part in his company’s decision to open up a 5,500 SF office in Miami’s One Downtown earlier this year.

The decision was primarily driven by Smolarski's home base — he joined WatchGuard from local tech player Kaseya in 2025 — and the available talent in the market, he said. The company plans to expand its new office to as big as 15K SF by next year.

“It did and will continue to help specifically from just a knowledge and experience that is starting to be concentrated in South Florida,” Smolarski said. “It makes a big difference.”

The increased activity coincides with a huge increase in spending from the Department of Defense amid the ongoing war with Iran, which has cost an estimated $38B since the U.S. and Israel started their bombing campaign in February.

The Pentagon wants to increase its budget to $1.5T, much of which would fund a commitment to technological advances, a more than 50% increase from its largest-ever annual budget of $901B in fiscal year 2026. 

While the proposal is stuck in Congress, the expected windfall for defense contractors, coupled with increased venture funding to the sector, has the industry buzzing.

Even more so as the Pentagon reassesses the way the military buys weapons, shifting its focus toward speed and efficiency and broadening the military’s use of artificial intelligence and autonomous drones and systems.

“Next-gen warfare is all about minimizing boots on the ground,” Boyd said.

Local billionaires and state officials are looking to the industry to help broaden the state’s economy to be less reliant on tourism and agriculture. 

The military and defense industry in Florida generated $58.7B in 2024, an increase of 21.8% from 2022, according to a 2025 FloridaCommerce report.

The state projected jobs in the industry, with an average wage of nearly $124K a year, to grow by 33,000 by 2028.

To help grow that pool, Gov. Ron DeSantis in August awarded nearly $23M to Florida’s defense industrial base and to support national security. The funding is split between a job growth grant fund, a defense reinvestment grant, a defense support commission grant, and a grant through Florida’s spaceport improvement program.

“By investing in critical infrastructure and workforce development, we’ve helped make Florida a magnet for defense, aerospace, and shipbuilding companies looking to start or expand their operations,” DeSantis said in a statement.

There has also been a local push to beef up the talent pool, specifically in Palm Beach County.

Boca Raton-based Florida Atlantic University completed its first Hacking for Defense course, which places student teams from the College of Engineering and Computer Science on real problems submitted by the Department of Defense, earlier this summer. 

Vanderbilt University is building a satellite graduate campus — which billionaire and Related Ross founder Stephen Ross personally invested in and led fundraising efforts for — in West Palm Beach for up to 2,000 students focused on defense tech, national security studies, AI, data science and business.

The school partnered with Related Ross and Amazon Web Services to co-host a defense tech leadership summit in the city earlier this year, which focused on bringing together business, government and education leaders to talk defense and technology innovation.

The conference was renewed for at least another two years, James said.

“The focus is: How do we be a little more nimble? How do we iterate?” Related Ross Vice Chairman Eric Silagy said.

“How do we learn from the lessons in Ukraine, as an example, and attract and help grow companies that can respond very quickly to the needs of our men and women who are serving so they can be equipped with the best technology that keeps them safe, as well as more productive, more effective in what they do in defending our country?”