American Hardtech Weekly Roundup #9

Austin's Saronic won 10 of the Navy's first 30 medium drone ships, then broke ground on Port Alpha, its privately funded Brownsville shipyard. Elsewhere in maritime, Quartermaster raised a $100M Series B and Anduril bought underwater modem maker Popoto.

El Segundo's Varda raised a $251M Series D at a $1.6B valuation, then flew two capsules on one rocket for the first time. Neighbor Charter Space raised a $5M seed to insure satellites so their owners can borrow against them.

The Pentagon reorganized around drones and robots. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced a four-star Autonomous Warfare Command. DIU director Owen West moved to run a new unmanned systems buying office that reports directly to Hegseth. And the Army created its own autonomy command, with autonomous fires, combat vehicles, and resupply due by fiscal 2028.

SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time and deployed 26 Starlink satellites, its first paying payload, before returning early. SpaceX then flew three missions in under 13 hours, including a rideshare carrying Starfish Space's first full-size Otter and Google's AI chip test satellite.

Raytheon landed back-to-back multiyear missile deals worth up to $20.7B for AMRAAM and $24.4B for SM-6. The Pentagon also opened $4.15B in counter-drone contracts to 10 companies, including Austin's Allen Control Systems. Congress hasn't funded the full multiyears yet, and industry warns suppliers may hold off on new capacity until it does.

The Army picked Torrance's Castelion and Huntington Beach's Mach Industries to compete with Lockheed, RTX, and Anduril on a 1,000 km ship-killing missile for HIMARS. Two missile makers only a few years old are now competing for a formal Army weapons program.

Boeing beat Northrop for the Navy's F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter, a development deal worth more than $20B. Boeing now holds both of America's next-generation fighter programs.

The NRC issued the first U.S. construction permit for a small modular reactor, TVA's BWRX-300 at Clinch River, four months early. LA-based Valar Atomics applied to build a 9.6 GW nuclear data center campus in Utah. And Hegseth ordered major bases to generate their own power, starting with an Air Force microreactor in Alaska by 2028.

Who pays for the factories became the week's big question. A Bain and AIA report found private investors put $7 into new defense companies for every $1 of government production money. a16z general partner Connor Love and Collen Larson called rebuilding the defense industrial base "one of the defining investment opportunities of the next decade." And Pentagon CFO Jules Hurst warned that many startups are still "paper deep" and need to have a path that viably considers manufacturing.

Blackstone launched Falcata by combining interceptor guidance makers TSC and ASEI, with Bloomberg reporting more than $1B committed. Blackstone's David Kaden named interceptor navigation and guidance as one of the costliest choke points in missile defense.

Houston-area Hertha Metals raised a $133.65M Series A led by Khosla Ventures and Doerr Capital, with the federal government putting in $65M of equity. It's building a plant to make high-purity iron for steel and rare earth magnets.

Bay Area AI hardware drew big checks. SF's Volantis raised an $88M Series A to link chips to memory with light, and Palo Alto's CScale came out of stealth with $145M for optical links between server racks. SF's Flow Engineering raised $50M at a $750M valuation for hardware design software used by Anduril and Stoke.

San Diego's Shield AI picked Des Moines, Washington, for its X-BAT AI fighter jet factory. Days earlier, Stoke CEO Andy Lapsa and Sophia Space's Brian Monnin warned that Washington is losing hardtech factories to states that recruit harder.

Ken Griffin gave Carnegie Mellon $3B, the largest gift ever to a university, including $2B for a new Miami campus. Two of its four focus areas are national security and advanced manufacturing.

Iowa approved about $1.4B in tax credits for Mesabi Metallics' $15B steel mill in Lee County, and Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the bill Friday night, five days after President Trump announced the project. There were concerns raised about the deal, ranging from anxieties over Mesabi's foreign ownership to State Senator Dan Dawson calling it the "largest corporate giveaway in the state of Iowa's history."

The FCC voted 2-1 to stop treating satellite launches and operations as triggers for environmental review. A bipartisan Senate group released a permitting bill that limits lawsuits and lets federal regulators approve stalled power lines, with a vote expected after the midterms.

South Korea committed up to $120B to build eight large reactors in the U.S., plus a minority stake in Westinghouse. The terms are non-binding, but a $10B advance would let suppliers start ordering parts that take years to build.

Sweden's Stegra found its first-of-a-kind green steel plant will cost well above plan and named former Saab CEO Håkan Buskhe to replace its founder-CEO.

Germany's Reverion raised a €154.2M Series B led by Kembara to build a fuel-cell power plant megafactory and grow from about 200 to 800 staff, as European climate money turns to powering data centers.

Canada Rocket Company is building the country's first large rocket engine test site in London, Ontario. Meanwhile, Scotland's Skyrora pushed its first orbital launch to 2030, citing cooling UK appetite for homegrown rockets.

London's Foundational came out of stealth with an £8.2M pre-seed to pin satellite positions to the millimeter by bouncing lasers off small reflectors.