American Hardtech Weekly Roundup #3

Hadrian raised $1.37B at a $7.87B valuation, just over a year after its $260M Series C. JPMorgan's Strategic Investment Group co-led. Headcount goes from about 700 to 2k in a year, with new factories aimed at munitions and maritime parts. (Axios)

Valar Atomics raised $1B led by Sequoia at a roughly $6B valuation, plus a separate $200M credit line. Its Ward 250 microreactor went critical in seven months and powered an Nvidia Blackwell system in June. Next step is building them in fleets. (TechCrunch)

Base Power raised $1B at a $13B post-money, led by Ribbit, Addition, Valor and JPMorgan. It also launched Base Core, a 39.2 kWh home battery built in Austin. The company has 500+ MWh deployed and installs about 100 batteries a day. (TechCrunch)

Northrop signed over $3B in framework agreements to expand interceptor motor production, $2B for PAC-3 MSE solid rocket motors and $1B for THAAD components over seven years. It creates a second source for Patriot motors, which had one supplier until now. (Northrop Grumman)

SpaceX posted its first full quarter as a public company. Revenue nearly doubled to $7.8B on a $541M net loss. Starlink did $4.3B across 12M subscribers, and the AI segment did $2.6B, close to three times the $962M launch business. (Payload)

The Space Force spread $615M across three vendors for the second round of its airborne moving target indicator program, with Rocket Lab taking $397M to build and fly Flatellites on Neutron. SpaceX won the first round in May. (DefenseScoop)

AE Industrial bought a majority of L3Harris' space propulsion business for $845M and revived the Rocketdyne name. About 1.3k people in Melbourne, Florida go with it, along with the RL10 that flies on Vulcan. (Air & Space Forces Magazine)

True Anomaly's Jackal pursued and imaged an evading target in orbit, a Rocket Lab satellite actively maneuvering away from it. Tasked July 14, the team planned it in 30 minutes and closed to about 10 km. When the target broke away, Jackal replanned on its own. (Payload)

SpaceX towed Ship 40 back intact after Flight 13, the first Starship upper stage recovered in one piece. Engineers get a direct look at heatshield damage instead of inferring it from telemetry. Flight 14 could go as soon as August 20. (NASASpaceflight)

The FCC cleared Xona to deploy its full 250-satellite Pulsar constellation, the first private operator authorized to broadcast navigation signals next to GPS. Signals run about 100x stronger than GPS with cryptographic anti-spoofing. First six launch in October. (Via Satellite)

Finland: ICEYE raised €1B at a valuation above €10B, including €450M primary. It is the first investment out of the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund. Seven European governments already buy its radar imagery. (Defence Industry Europe)

Canada: Telesat signed the biggest deal in its 60-year history, C$2.3B for secure military satcom above 65 degrees north starting 2028. Lightspeed grows from 156 satellites to 225, with MDA building the additions in Montreal. (Via Satellite)

France: automotive suppliers are converting to drone production. Renault and Thales are redesigning the Toutatis loitering munition for injection molding, targeting 1k a month by 2027, with Forvia and Delair chasing similar numbers. France holds a few thousand drones today. (Defense News)

Australia: buying Lockheed's AIM-260 for about A$736M, the first operator outside the U.S., inside a planned $36B decade of guided weapons spending. It also flew its first fully Australian-built solid rocket motor at Koonibba, full burn and clean recovery. (TWZ, Australian Defence Magazine)