April's Space Dirt🚀

April’s Space Dirt is packed with the latest news affecting the hard tech real estate world.

Let’s go!

REAL ESTATE HIGHLIGHTS

Chaos Industries leased 14,000 square feet at 3330 W El Segundo Blvd, Hawthorne, CA. (source: Me!)

Shinkei leased 6,089 square feet at 228 Nevada Street, El Segundo, CA. (source: Me!)

GITAI leased 44,737 square feet at 3305 Kashiwa Street, Torrance, CA. (source: Me!)

Mach Industries leased 110,592 SF at 5473 Bolsa Ave, Huntington Beach, CA. With this lease, Mach has moved its headquarters from Austin, Texas, to Huntington Beach. (Source: Me!)

Oakland-based Pyka has signed an eight-year lease for 110,000 square feet at Alameda Point - 950 West Tower Ave, Alameda, CA - that will serve as its corporate headquarters and production facility. (source: Bay Area Inno)

Saronic is expanding its company headquarters and production and manufacturing facilities in Austin, TX, after acquiring an additional 65,000 square feet to support the rapid design, development, production, and manufacturing of its growing family of autonomous surface vessels (ASVs). Saronic will maintain its existing machine shop, bringing its total occupancy in Austin to nearly 100,000 square feet of operational space. It will also continue to utilize its 5,000+ square foot ocean testing facility in Galveston, Texas, to ensure its ASVs can be evaluated and tested against real-world conditions and operational environments. (source: Medium)

NOTABLE FUNDINGS

El Segundo-based Varda Space Industries has closed a massive tranche of funding just weeks after its first drug manufacturing capsule returned from orbit. The company’s $90 million Series B round marks an inflection point for the company, which is now gearing up to scale from the initial demonstration mission to a regular set of missions carrying customer payloads, Varda founder Delian Asparouhov told TechCrunch. The new financing was led by Caffeinated Capital, with participation from Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, and Khosla Ventures. Varda has now raised $145 million to date. (source: TechCrunch)

After operating in stealth for two years, Los Angeles-based startup, Nominal has raised more than $27 million from some of Silicon Valley’s top VC firms, including Lux Capital, General Catalyst, and Founders Fund. Nominal aims to accelerate the creation of hardware used in space, energy, and other sectors critical to national security. Its customers include portable nuclear micro-reactor company Radiant Industries, satellite startup Muon Space, and space manufacturing company Varda Space Industries. Nominal has won $4.3 million in government contracts and is hoping to expand its relationship with the Defense Department. (source: Yahoo! Finance)

Santa Clara-based Celestial AI, developer of the Photonic Fabric™ optical interconnect technology platform, announced it raised $175 million in its Series C funding round led by Thomas Tull’s U.S. Innovative Technology Fund (USIT). In addition to USIT, the round included participation from new and existing investors, including AMD Ventures, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Temasek, Temasek subsidiary Xora Innovation, IAG Capital Partners, Samsung Catalyst, Smart Global Holdings, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Engine Ventures, M-Ventures and Tyche Partners. (source: Optics.org)

AGREEMENTS, PARTNERSHIPS, & CONTRACTS

Costa Mesa, CA defense startup Anduril and Poway, CA’s drone maker General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) have been picked by the Air Force to build and test drone prototypes for the next phase of the service’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, the Air Force announced. The Air Force’s decision winnows down a pool of five competitors to two. As a result, three other vendors — Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman — have been eliminated from the running. Unveiled by the service as a major multibillion-dollar program in the fiscal year 2024 budget, the CCA effort aims to initially field as many as 1,000 drones. When it comes to specific designs, GA-ASI has stated that the company’s Gambit drone family would be its entry, while Anduril’s acquisition last year of autonomous aircraft vendor Blue Force positioned the Fury drone to be Anduril’s bid. In images today touting the company’s win, Anduril showcased the Fury drone, appearing to confirm the drone was the company’s bid. (source: Breaking Defense)

Rocket Lab announced that it has been selected for a $32 million US Space Force Space Systems Command (SSC) contract to deliver the VICTUS HAZE Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) mission. The mission will see Rocket Lab design, build, launch, and operate a rendezvous proximity operation (RPO) capable spacecraft. The mission was contracted under Rocket Lab National Security, a wholly owned subsidiary that serves the U.S. and its allies with responsive and reliable launch services, spacecraft manufacturing, and space systems capabilities. (source: Business Wire)

The Space Force selected True Anomaly and (as mentioned above) Rocket Lab to develop spacecraft for its next Tactically Responsive Space mission, dubbed Victus Haze. True Anomaly, a spacecraft and software company based in Colorado, received $30 million to provide one of its Jackal space vehicles for the mission, slated to launch in 2025. Under the terms of the deal — known as an Emergent Need Small Business Innovation Research award — the firm will match the government investment, providing another $30 million to pay for risk-reduction activities. Rocket Lab’s contract, which came through the Defense Innovation Unit, is worth $32 million. (source: Defense News)

Poway, CA’s EpiSci, has announced a strategic collaboration with Northrop Grumman, aiming to develop and deploy advanced autonomous tactical solutions for the benefit of the United States and its allies. The partnership will see EpiSci’s cutting-edge TacticalAI software integrated into Northrop Grumman’s sophisticated aeronautics system architecture, thereby fast-tracking the provision of advanced autonomous solutions to the defense sector. This integration is anticipated to significantly enhance the operational efficiency and success of warfighter missions through trusted autonomous technologies. (source: Inside Unmanned Systems)

Mountain View, CA-based Muon Space also announced Muon Halo contract wins valued over $60 million to design, build, and operate 10 satellites ranging in size from 150kg-500kg with cutting-edge remote sensing payloads launching throughout 2025 and 2026. (source: Muon Space)

HARD TECH SUBLEASES

For those in the sublease market, we have a couple of new opportunities on Space Dirt’s sister site, Hard Tech Subleases.

Speaking of subleases, this may be as close as I ever get to going viral👇! Thanks for the shoutout Halen!

WHAT I’M CONSUMING (AND ENJOYING!)

⛽️ General Galactic emerges from stealth, producing about 2,000 liters of methane per day. Its goal is to drive down the cost of e-fuels. “The north star for us is to make methane in a way that is literally cheaper to synthesize from the air, to reuse the emissions, than to pump it out of the ground,” Mattison told TechCrunch. Check out this TechCrunch article to learn more.

🎯 Nathan Mintz may as well be a regular contributor by now for the number of times I recommend his Substacks. Here’s another piece of his in which I learned a ton. This one is about modern warfare, what we are seeing, and how we got to where we are technologically. A preview: “Whereas in the past an air force was a luxury only afforded to governments, today it’s something you can create in your basement with 3D printers and parts from Digikey.”

🎙 I enjoyed this Payload podcast with Dan Wright, CEO and co-founder of Armada, the world’s first full-stack edge computing platform.

📈 Leo Polovets, General Partner at Susa Ventures and Humba Ventures, makes the case for why this is the golden age of deep tech companies (and to build a deep tech company), as they are becoming easier to build, staff, and fund than ever before in this motivating Substack piece.

⚛️ I was today years old when I learned about tau neutrinos. Researchers at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica have found seven signals that could potentially indicate tau neutrinos—which are famously hard to detect—from astrophysical objects.

🌖 ICYMI. Many thanks to my client, OrbiFab, for including me in their open house and space symposium kickoff. I was blown away by their impressive speaker lineup, which included Lt. Gen. John Shaw (former Deputy Commander of U.S. Space Command), Dr. James Reilly (former NASA astronaut and Director of USGS), and Chris Quilty (Co-CEO and President of Quilty Space). What I learned, as Dr. Reilly said here, Bottom line: on-orbit logistics and maintenance are force multipliers and we won’t achieve the goals of Moon to Mars without In-space Servicing Assembly and Manufacturing.

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Thanks for reading.

If you’d like your office and/or manufacturing space or business profiled - or even your city! - let me know. It’s always fun to explore and share the different components of the hard tech industry.

Erik Stiebel
Founder and Vice President
CA DRE License #02080746
(c) +1 424.241.4795
[email protected] | 𝕏

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you with your real estate.

1. A new home for your growing business. The good news - you’re growing! The bad news - you need to move and you don’t know the market. I can help.

2. Sublease your space. You’ve outgrown your space and need to move but don’t want to pay two rents? I got you.

3. Time to renew your lease? Want to make sure you’re getting a fair deal from your Landlord? In my experience, you can never be too certain. (BTW, I recommend starting the lease renewal process 12 months out at a minimum.)

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