We cover all the money flooding into the defense startup world every day, but sometimes a funding round still makes us do a double-take.
Hadrian’s Series D is one of those “holy shit” rounds.
This morning, the “Factory as a Service” company announced that it’s raised a cool $1.37B (yes—that’s billion with a B) in fresh capital, valuing it at nearly $8B.
For those keeping score at home, that’s about a five-fold increase in valuation since the company last raised in January.
- The round was co-led by WCM Investment Management, Washington Harbour Partners, Valor Equity Partners, 137 Ventures, and Baillie Gifford. JP Morgan’s Strategic Investment Group—through the bank’s $1.5T, 10-year Security and Resiliency Initiative—joined as anchor co-lead.
- The latest financing comes about a year after Hadrian’s $260M Series C, which now looks rather quaint in comparison (or we’re just jaded).
- Hadrian CEO Chris Power told Tectonic and other reporters that the company is also closing a “large line of credit” in the coming weeks, which’ll go into “R&D and factory expansion.”
Build baby build: Hadrian was founded back in 2020 with the ambitious goal of building autonomous, software-defined factories to “reindustrialize America” (before it was cool).
- Hadrian’s robots and process automation software focus on those high-tech, tricky components that can slow down production and delivery—from engine components to spaceflight hardware—to make component manufacturing a whole lot faster and cheaper.
- The company’s Opus software is also designed to make it super easy to train factory workers, who they say can pretty much go from working at McDonald’s to building submarine parts in a matter of weeks.
- On top of their own factories, the company operates a “factory-as-a-service” model that allows partners to source both components and finished products from them.
- Hadrian builds components and machined parts for everything from Lockheed-made missiles—we’re talking Patriots, THAADs, Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), and GMLRS—to Virginia and Columbia-class submarines across nearly 3M square feet of factory space at four facilities.
Show me the money: The Series D is all about adding a whole lot of fuel to that white-hot reindustrialization fire.
“We’re seeing so much demand for factories-as-a-service, and also Opus, our software platform, that we can’t keep up,” Power said. “What this really enables us to do is massively expand our footprint and capability, and just go harder and deeper into munitions ramp, submarines, the drone industrial base, and, obviously, our existing customer base.”
- Submarines are a big focus: Hadrian inked a $2.4B partnership with the US Navy—split between $1.5B in private capital and $900M in government funding—to produce Virginia and Columbia-class submarine components at the startup’s 2.2M square-foot facility in Cherokee, Alabama, back in March.
- Power said that equipment will “start to land” at the Alabama facility “in the next eight months,” which’ll be up and running soon after.
Ramping up: Power, like anyone else paying attention to the war in Iran, is also concerned about America’s weapons stockpiles (especially of the defensive variety). Unlike pretty much everyone else, he can do something about it.
“I would say the top 2 focus areas of the company are munitions ramp and submarines,” he said. “I’m spending about 40 percent of my life and working hours on munitions ramp at the moment.”
Hadrian is also opening a dedicated engineering and R&D facility in San Francisco, launching a slew of new factories, and has plans to boost headcount from 700 to 2,000 over the next year.
Looks like the factory of the future craze ain’t going anywhere anytime soon.
