American Hardtech Weekly Roundup #15

Chipmakers had a wild week. Santa Clara’s Nvidia said CEO Jensen Huang resigned effective immediately, with finance chief Colette Kress serving as interim CEO, while Santa Clara’s Applied Materials posted a record $10.41B quarter and GlobalFoundries broke ground on a roughly $10B Japan-funded chip plant in Malta, New York.

Advanced reactors cleared key hurdles. The NRC issued its first construction permit for a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in over 50 years, for four X-energy reactors at Dow’s Seadrift, Texas, plant, the Department of Energy cleared Santa Clara’s Oklo to run its Groves-1 test reactor without restrictions, and Rhode Island’s Project Omega raised an $80M Series A to turn spent fuel into batteries for the military.

The nuclear fuel chain filled in. Oklo signed contracts with Centrus for HALEU, a more enriched fuel, for up to five reactors, backed by Meta’s prepayments, TRISO fuel maker Standard Nuclear more than doubled its backlog to $577M, X-energy finished the structure of its Tennessee fuel plant, and FluxPoint Energy raised a seed round for what would be the first new U.S. uranium conversion plant in nearly 70 years.

Space had a busy week. NASA put eight companies on a lunar lander contract worth up to $10B and picked Blue Origin to land a nuclear-powered rover, Starship reached orbit on its longest flight yet, Long Beach’s Rocket Lab signed over $515M in Neutron contracts, and Intuitive Machines posted a record quarter. Vulcan’s return to flight slipped to Sunday, and Austin’s Firefly and AST SpaceMobile pushed back launch plans.

Defense hardware hit milestones. The B-21 bomber released its first weapon, two Anduril drone wingmen flown by Shield AI software ran air combat maneuvers with no pilot aboard, Lockheed delivered its 100,000th GMLRS rocket, and AeroVironment won a $405M order for drone-killing lasers on top of an initial $315M award under a new $940M contract.

Factory automation drew big checks. Path Robotics raised a $300M Series E at a $2.45B valuation for AI welding robots, Austin’s Nominal raised a $240M Series C at $3B for hardware testing software, Nidus raised $30M to teach existing robots precision assembly in defense factories, and Tristar AI raised a $12.4M Series A for AI that spots defects on factory lines.

Quantum hardware pushes to achieve scale. IBM plans to link two new Nighthawk processors into a 1,000-plus-qubit system in 2027, Berkeley’s Rigetti hit its 99.5% two-qubit fidelity goal and set a 300-qubit target for 2028, and Atom Computing finalized up to $100M from the Commerce Department to build fault-tolerant quantum computers.

Startup money kept moving. Sunnyvale’s Applied Intuition is in talks to raise at least $1.5B at about a $30B valuation, San Leandro’s Coreshell raised a $30M Series B for batteries free of Chinese minerals, Seattle’s Ascend closed a $17M fund for physical AI, Colorado’s Sagittarius Logistics raised a $1.2M pre-seed for inland launch, and El Segundo’s Falcon ExoDynamics was acquired by Trusted Space.

Materials makers expanded. USA Rare Earth made its first magnet sales from its Oklahoma plant as its Brazilian mine began shipping heavy rare earths to a Pentagon-backed buyer, ATI is expanding nickel superalloy powder and nuclear-grade zirconium production, Fervo’s contracted geothermal power sales reached about $11.9B, and Boeing will cut about 5% of its commercial airplane workforce.

The hunt for AI power got creative. Anthropic agreed to buy about $3.4B of Caterpillar gas generators, the Financial Times reported, SpaceX plans a gas plant and supercomputing facility at Starbase starting at $24B, Torus raised $500M for prefabricated AI units that bring chips to available power, and Accelevation’s backlog of factory-built data center systems more than quadrupled to $1.7B.

AI cloud backlogs swelled. CoreWeave lifted its backlog to about $132.5B and its contracted power to over 4.6 GW, Sunnyvale’s Cerebras posted $26.1B in contracted business and secured 700 MW of data center capacity, and Fermi signed an unnamed hyperscaler for an initial 600 MW at its Texas campus while ending its lease with AI cloud TensorWave.

The Senate advanced a bipartisan permitting bill that would set a 150-day deadline to sue over permits, bar agencies from revoking fully permitted projects, and make data centers pay for the grid upgrades they need. Final Senate votes are expected next week, and the House would still need to act before the current Congress ends in January.

Allied power and grid suppliers rode the AI buildout. Germany’s Siemens Energy posted a record €164B backlog and Siemens a record €108.2B in yearly orders, both helped by data center demand, while the Netherlands’ Nebius pushed some Microsoft capacity into 2027 and Japan’s SoftBank took a $3.7B loss on power equipment it had lined up for U.S. data centers.

European defense builders raised and regrouped. The UK’s UFORCE raised a $700M Series A at a $6B valuation for sea drones and other uncrewed systems, Europe’s Onodrim raised a $300M Series A to buy aerospace and defense suppliers, Germany’s Hensoldt set a €10B revenue goal for 2035, and Czechia’s CSG hit a record €18B backlog but cut its margin outlook.

Allied governments reset defense plans. Japan’s Finance Ministry proposed a smaller-than-expected five-year defense budget that could halve some missile and aircraft buys, Reuters reported, Italy boosted spending on its GCAP fighter while trimming tank funding, the UK signed a deal to build Atlantic Net, a network of uncrewed systems to track Russian submarines, and France ordered two IRIS reconnaissance satellites from Airbus and Thales.

Allied companies built in North America. Japan’s Honda will invest $3B in a new Ohio auto plant, Germany’s BASF opened the final phase of its $1B Louisiana chemical plant, Canada’s Lithium Americas raised its Thacker Pass cost estimate by about 31% on higher labor costs, and Ontario Power Generation said Canada’s first small modular reactor will miss its 2030 start and budget.