Even GoPro needs protection

Want to make money? Start building a data center. Or make batteries for electricity. Or: Pivot to defense.

This is not financial advice, but it is what seems to be winning over the public markets and private investors recently. Ford’s energy-storage business — slightly smaller than Tesla’s and not expected to be ready until next year — helped fuel its jump. than many years. Redwood Materials raised $425 million from blue chip companies such as Google and Nvidia to data center energy storage. Macerebras only took out one of them the hottest IPOs of 2026.

Investments in security startups continue, and upgrade Anduril another $5 billion this week. It seems that every company with access to government contracts is trying to do the same.

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 as common as “Tesla killer” or “iPhone killer,” with people referring to anything from the killer. TomTom action camera to Google Clips (do you remember that?) would have fired the California company that created the group.

Survival does not mean success, however, and GoPro has been struggling of late. Sales are down, losses are highand its stock price dropped to about $1 two years ago. So, surprisingly, last month GoPro announced a plan “to focus on defensive opportunities and market opportunities.”

It makes sense for a company that combines a high-quality image with enough durability to withstand a motorcycle accident, or fall from the sky. And the pivot he was enough to almost double the company’s value for several days. But that, too, has returned to Earth. It seems the “pivot to defense” concept won’t be as bulletproof as GoPro cameras, after all.

You can guess where this is going. On Thursday, GoPro announced that it had hired investment banker Houlihan Lokey help to analyze “possible sales and other strategic initiatives.” The company’s board of directors said it recently received “several unsolicited inquiries from various parties including security, consumer and financial,” which is a lot of words: “Uh-oh.”

This isn’t the first time GoPro has considered selling; founder and CEO Nick Woodman it he was in short on the table in the back in 2018.

But now things have taken a turn for the worse for the company. Not only are its finances hurting, the company announced last month that it was laying off a quarter of its workforce, already down by more than 600 workers after hiring about 1,500.

GoPro was a technology sensation 15 years ago. But like most of us, it now finds itself navigating an unstable world. It is not surprising that a the Pentagon’s largest budget it seems like a way forward.