Hadrian Valued at Nearly $8 Billion After $1.37B Funding as Defense Tech Boom Accelerates

Hadrian valued at nearly $8 billion after fresh funding as money pours into defense tech

Riding a wave of enthusiasm for defense tech, manufacturing startup Hadrian on Thursday closed its latest round of funding at a nearly $8 billion valuation, more than quadruple where investors valued the company in January. The round was led by Baillie Gifford, J.P. Morgan Strategic Investment Group, and a number of others, including Washington Harbor Partners. "It enables us to make massive investments to scale our workforce, our software platform Opus that powers our factories, and frankly, get ahead of the massive amounts of production challenges the country has in areas like submarines, munitions, the drone industrial base," CEO Chris Power told CNBC's Morgan Brennan on "Morning Call" on Thursday. Hadrian builds advanced factories for defense and aerospace companies and agencies. Power said the company's Opus software is being used by the Army and Navy, and the company will be announcing other defense primes soon. "With physical AI sweeping the physical economy, which is 100 times larger than the digital economy, everyone's going to need to rebase their software to adapt and compete in this new world," Power told CNBC. Hadrian is the latest in a series of high-profile defense funding rounds, fueled by President Donald Trump's push to reindustrialize the U.S. military and scale a robust manufacturing base. Trump is seeking to spend an unprecedented $1.5 trillion on defense as geopolitical tensions heighten the need for new weapons and spur calls to reduce U.S dependence on expensive missile systems. Shield AI, whose technology powers drones, raised money in March at a $12.7 billion valuation, and that month autonomous ship maker Saronic, whose technology was used in Iran, was valued at $9.25 billion in a new funding round. Anduril doubled its valuation two months later to over $60 billion. Last year, Hadrian raised $260 million, with funding from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, to build a new factory and bolster naval defense capabilities.

Hadrian raises $1.37bn at a near-$8bn defence valuation

Hadrian, which builds AI-run factories for the US military, has raised $1.37bn at a valuation just shy of $8bn. In seven months its price has climbed almost fivefold, and the backers are no longer only defence specialists. The defence-tech boom has a new marker. Hadrian builds automated factories for the Pentagon and its contractors. Founded in 2021, it has announced a $1.37bn Series D that values it at $7.87bn. In January the same company was worth $1.6bn. Bloomberg first flagged the talks in June, at a mooted $7.5bn, and reported the close. What is striking is who wrote the cheques. JPMorgan's Strategic Investment Group anchored the round, alongside Baillie Gifford, T. Rowe Price accounts, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management and funds run by Apollo. These are mainstream institutions, not the niche defence funds that seeded the sector. Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, also joined. Factories as software Hadrian's pitch is that manufacturing is a software problem. It runs highly automated plants under a "factories-as-a-service" model. A defence prime can buy production capacity without building its own plant. Its system, Opus, handles scheduling, tool routing and inspection, and the company says it cuts lead times from months to days. The work is real, not a slide deck. Hadrian supplies Lockheed Martin, RTX and Anduril. The US Navy has tapped it to mass-produce submarine parts in Alabama. It runs almost three million square feet across four sites. Its founder, Chris Power, told Axios the company was "early." It was a five-year slog, he said, before Washington woke up to factories. The money funds people and reach. Power plans to nearly triple the workforce to 2,000 within a year. He also wants teams in Australia, Asia and Europe by December, to make parts for NATO. The equity will not build the factories themselves. Hadrian is arranging a separate line of credit for that, a split it means to repeat. A boom, or a bubble Hadrian is riding a wave. Defence-tech startups pulled in about $35bn from private investors in the first half of 2026, the strongest six months on record. Anduril is now worth more than $60bn, Shield AI $12.7bn. The money is chasing President Trump's plan to spend up to $1.5tn rebuilding the US military. That backdrop cuts both ways. The same rush that lifted Hadrian's price almost fivefold in months is the kind of surge that later invites a correction. Power does not plan to test public markets until 2029 at the earliest. That buys him room, but the valuation rests on private rounds for years yet. The wider thesis is reindustrialisation. The West must relearn how to build at scale, with physical AI and robotics as the tools. Power frames it as a race with China, which he says is betting heavily on industrial dominance. Hadrian is the sharpest wager yet that weapons production is where that contest gets tested first. Its founder puts it plainly. "Production is now the frontline of deterrence," Power said.

Exclusive: Hadrian raises $1.37B amid surging defense-production demand

Why it matters: American reindustrialization is catching on beyond niche national-security and investor communities. What they're saying: "We were early," chief executive Chris Power tells Axios. * "This has been a five-year slog, and only 18 months ago everyone went, 'Oh, God, manufacturing is super important, and we really need to create new American manufacturing jobs fast.'" How it works: Hadrian pumps out precision parts and provides factories-as-a-service for aerospace and defense markets. It employs skilled human workers and augments that workforce with artificial intelligence, automation and robotics. (Its proprietary software is known as Opus.) * Hadrian today has nearly 3 million square-feet across four sites, and a new headquarters in Los Angeles and an engineering and research-and-development hub in San Francisco are being planned. Zoom in: Hadrian works with the world's largest arms makers, including Lockheed Martin and RTX, as well as neo-primes and smaller outfits, like Anduril Industries. * In March, the U.S. Navy said the company would mass-produce components in Alabama for the service's Virginia-class attack and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. * "I think we're far ahead of the pack, in terms of highly automated, design-agnostic factories," Power says. Follow the money: This Series D funding comes a little more than one year after a $260 million Series C. * Backers include WCM Investment Management, Washington Harbour Partners, Valor Equity Partners, 137 Ventures and Baillie Gifford. * JPMorganChase's Strategic Investment Group served as the anchor co-lead, investing via the firm's Security and Resiliency Initiative. Zoom out: Wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe have thrust production proficiency and munitions health into the spotlight. * U.S. troops overseas are today shooting expensive interceptors and missiles faster than they are being produced at home. (The Pentagon has denied stockpile depletion.) The bottom line: "This is a no-fail mission to make sure that we have the production capability domestically," Power says. * "Being able to produce -- and have advanced factories -- is deterrence," he adds. * "It was never inventory. It was never a nice design. It's mass, and we need that in place for the next four to 10 years, so that we can continue to lead the world in a rational, democratic way."