If 2024 was hot girl summer and 2025 was BRAT summer, then 2026 may well be the summer of the defense tech IPO.
(Yes, these all exist in the same cultural reference ecosystem, what are you talking about?)
This morning, hypersonics and SRM giant Ursa Major announced that it plans to go public via SPAC on the Nasdaq in Q1 2027.
- The company has entered into agreement with a SPAC called Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. III (Nasdaq: BCCQU), backed by the management team of Inflection Point Asset Management, for the listing.
- The deal is expected to be worth about $2.3B, with a pre-money equity valuation of about $1.6B.
- The transaction is also supported by $350 million in Private Investment in Public Equity (PIPE) commitments, according to Ursa Major.
“Deterrence depends on what can be built reliably, safely and at scale,” Chris Spagnoletti, CEO of Ursa Major, said in a statement. “For eleven years, Ursa Major has invested in the hard work behind that outcome: propulsion, manufacturing, testing, qualification and flight. This transaction will help us turn that foundation into the production capacity our customers need. Becoming a public company aligns with our high standard of transparency and accountability, strengthening our ability to deliver responsibly for the warfighter over the long term.”
We’re entering the big leagues, baby.
Knock it outta the park: Now, we’ve covered Ursa Major a whole bunch, so we’ll keep this quick. The company was founded back in 2015 in Colorado and specializes in making engines and other propulsion systems (like SRMs) that make things go, like, really fast.
Their rocket engines are used in everything from space launch to hypersonics and missile defense, and come in a few different flavors:
- Hadley: A LOX (liquid oxygen) and kerosene (RP-1) engine designed for small launchers, hypersonics, and the like. This “powers the Department of War’s hypersonic test bed, with more than 10 successful missions,” according to the company.
- Ripley: A more powerful LOX and kerosene engine for medium-payload launch vehicles.
- Arroway: A heavy-lift LOX and methane engine still in development.
- Draper: A version of Hadley using storable liquid hydrogen peroxide and kerosene fuel, best for hypersonic and defense applications.
They also have a production system called Lynx, which uses additive manufacturing to build a whole range of solid rocket motors.
- The company says it can manufacture motors from 2 to 22 inches in diameter on essentially the same adaptable production system, including cases, nozzles and igniters.
- Ursa says it has static-fired motors at 2.75″, 5″, 7″, 10″, and 13.5″ and is currently producing hundreds of SRMs annually.
- They’ve been tapped by the Navy to build (and test) MK 104 SRMs using Lynx, and earlier this summer they won a $10M contract to bring that SRM through critical design review and static fire tests.
And it’s not like they’ve been doing all of this on a shoestring. The company has raised over $380M in private capital, but the idea is that this IPO will give them even more cash money to scale.
“This is not capital for a concept; it is capital to scale proven technology and production against some of the most urgent and well-funded priorities in U.S. national security,” Michael Blitzer, chairman and founder of Inflection Point, said in a statement. “We believe Ursa has the ingredients to become one of the defining national security companies of the next generation, and we are proud to be its partner in the public markets.”
Worth noting: Inflection Point also led IPOs for Intuitive Machines in 2023, USA Rare Earth in 2024, and Merlin Labs earlier this year.
- There’s also the planned $1B SPAC deal with Elroy Air, but that’s not completed yet.
