Here’s my hardtech week in review for July 27th to 31st, 2026
U.S. HARDTECH
- The story of the week: Hop Aero, a Y Combinator startup out of Orange County, unveiled Rook, an autonomous hypersonic cargo rocket that launches from a 40-foot shipping container, carries 550 lbs about 450 miles in roughly 15 minutes, and lands on unprepared ground. (Payload)
- The FCC blocked new imports of foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots plus power inverters on national security grounds, a move aimed squarely at China that leaves the home market wide open for American robotics makers. (The Hill)
- Antares Industries closed a $470M Series C co-led by Paradigm and Caffeinated Capital, bringing total funding near $600M as it pushes toward military microreactor deployments by 2028. (TechCrunch)
- Rocket Lab won a $266M Space Force contract, the largest launch deal in its history, for 12 suborbital missile-defense test launches from a new pad at Alaska's Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak. (Space.com)
- DIU launched the SWAP-USV Prize Challenge, up to $100M with another $200M in follow-on budget, pairing unmanned surface vessels with drones against cheap maritime threats on a 120-day fielding goal. (DIU)
- Sila raised $300M from Atreides and Sutter Hill to expand its Moses Lake, Washington plant making silicon-carbon anodes, American battery materials at scale. (GeekWire)
- And for fun: Palmer Luckey's ModRetro launched the M64, a $229 FPGA-based Nintendo 64 that plays original cartridges. American nostalgia engineering at its finest. (GamesBeat)
ALLIED HARDTECH
- Israel: Enigma came out of stealth with a $71M seed led by Index and Ribbit to give any robot a usable intelligence layer, running more than a hundred proprietary robots in hangars in Israel and California. (CTech)
- Switzerland: ZuriQ, an ETH Zürich spinout, raised a $25.5M seed to scale its two-dimensional trapped-ion quantum architecture built with Infineon. (Tech.eu)
- New Zealand: Outlier Space, founded by Rocket Lab's former Electron program director, raised a $7.35M pre-seed to build a reusable return capsule for microgravity research and manufacturing. (Space & Defense)
Know a founder who should be in here? Send them my way. And follow on X (@AmHardtech) for the daily.