December's Space Dirt 🚀

This issue marks the completion of TWO years of publishing Space Dirt.

I’m always looking for ways to serve my audience, so feel free to drop me a note if you have some info you’d like to share or ideas on ways to improve the newsletter.

All that said…

Thank you for being a part of this journey with me.

Happy holidays!

REAL ESTATE HIGHLIGHTS

Valar leased 31,378 square feet at 4857 W 147th St, Hawthorne, CA. (source: Me!)

Aetherflux leased 8,000 square feet at 959 Terminal Way, San Carlos, CA. (source: Me!)

Quantum Systems leased 135,000 square feet at 609 Science Drive, Moorpark, CA. (source: Me!)

New Smoky Hollow tenant, CREA, leased 1,611 square feet at 1325 E El Segundo Blvd, El Segundo, CA. (source: Me!)

Irwindale, CA-based Launchpad Build has opened a new R&D hub in Edinburgh, Scotland’s New Town. Employing a team of 24, the site is aimed at driving the development of its proprietary robotics technology, Digitool, which simplifies automation tools and reduces manufacturing production costs. The company has also been awarded a £2m Scottish Enterprise grant towards the project. (source: Insider.co.uk)

Beehive Industries celebrated the opening of its new 59,152-square-foot headquarters located at 7955 S Potomac St, Centennial, CO. The facility will serve as a hub for jet engine development, advanced manufacturing, and defense innovation, bringing high-tech jobs to the Denver region. The building features two custom-built jet engine test cells, a fully equipped quality control lab with a large format CMM, 8 metal 3D printers, 5 multi-axis CNC machines, and an onsite fitness gym. There are currently 65 employees operating in Centennial. The company expects to bring on up to 100 more in the next 24 months. (source: Beehive Industries and LinkedIn)

Austin, TX’s Aeon opened its newest office space in Lawton, OK’s FISTA Innovation Park in Fort Sill alongside Firehawk and Picogrid. The new office will be home to Aeon’s beachhead team in Oklahoma and as a workstation for visiting team members as they expand into the state to work closer with their partners. (source: LinkedIn)

STEALTH NO MORE

Boston-based Fabri came out of stealth and announced it raised a $5 million seed round led by Lavrock Ventures, with participation from RTX Ventures, Tenon Ventures, and SBXi. Fabri builds software-defined investment casting foundries producing precision metal castings for the USA's most critical industries. (source: LinkedIn)

Tusla, OK’s Ironbird Studio, came out of stealth via its website. “Ironbird Studio will identify hard problems worth solving, build great tech to crack them, and co-found companies to bring those solutions to market.” (source: Ironbird Studio)

Robert Mitchell announced 13th Hour, a 3D-printed boat company. (source: X)

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REAL ESTATE CORNER - THE MAP 3.0

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the SoCal Hard Tech Landscape 3.0 map. Before anyone says anything, yes, I’m aware I left off Raytheon, Grumman, etc.

If you’d like a PDF version of the map, reply to this email. Note: I’m only sharing the PDF with Space Dirt subscribers. (Hit the “Subscribe” button above.)

And, if you’re going to share this, I’d appreciate source credit, a h/t… some type of acknowledgment. I know I sound like the passive-aggressive keyboard warrior, but you’d be surprised at some of the esteemed places I found my earlier versions without any mention of a source. Gotta love the internet!

NOTABLE FUNDINGS

Before we get into the individual fundings, I wanted to share a chart from Payload that lists the largest space funding deals in the world in 2024. I thought some people might find the geographic breakdown interesting. Of the 15 biggest funding deals this year for space startups, Chinese companies had five, five came from US startups, four were from European firms, and one was from Australia.

Back to our normal funding roundup.

Pixxel raised a $24 million extension of its Series B funding round, with new capital from M&G Investments and Glade Brook Capital Partners, CEO Awais Ahmed told Payload. The Indo-US space data company is planning to launch six satellites with high-resolution hyperspectral sensors on the next SpaceX Transporter mission, expected in early 2025. Six more will follow on a subsequent SpaceX rideshare later in the year. (source: Payload)

Veteran Ventures Capital announced a strategic investment in Irvine, CA’s Turion Space. Turion is at the forefront of solving two of space's most pressing capability gaps: space domain awareness and non-earth imaging, both critical to maintaining space operations and expanding in-space mobility. Veteran Ventures Capital invested in Turion's recently closed and oversubscribed Series A funding round. Turion has raised nearly $20 million in venture capital to date. (source: PR Newswire)

Spin Launch has closed an $11.5 million round out of a planned $25 million, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. SpinLaunch confirmed funding to TechCrunch, but did not comment on the amount raised. It last raised a $71 million Series B in 2022. (source: TechCrunch)

Bozeman, MT’s Reveal Technology, has raised $11.2 million. The defense technology startup focuses on software for critical decisions by the warfighter. Their software product, Farsight, provides real-time mapping information via UAS data, creating 3D maps from videos. The round was led by Next Frontier Capital, with 8VC and defy.vc participating. (source: TechCrunch)

Menlo Park, CA’s OceanWell, a water technology company, announced $11 million in Series A funding to scale its next-generation modular deep-sea water farm solution and launch California's water farm pilot with Las Virgenes Municipal Water District (LVMWD). Kubota Corporation, a century-old leader in water infrastructure manufacturing, the family office of Jon Hemingway of Carrix Ports, and Charles McGarraugh, former head of metals trading at Goldman Sachs, participated in the round. (source: PR Newswire)

Redmond, WA-based Lumen Orbit closed on an $11 million seed round at a $40 million valuation, confirming prior TechCrunch reporting that the company had raised a competitive double-digit round as one of the buzziest startups out of Y Combinator’s Summer 2024 batch. The deal was led by NFX — NFX general partner Morgan Beller will join the company’s board — with participation from VCs, including Fuse.VC, Soma Capital, and scout funds from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, among others. Lumen Orbit co-founder and CEO Philip Johnston told TechCrunch that due to the high investor demand — more than 200 hundred VCs reached out to the startup — the company has since opened up another SAFE round on top of it, at a higher valuation, to let more investors in. (source: TechCrunch)

Deterrence announced a total of $10.1 million in funding after closing a seed round led by Riot Ventures with contributions from others, including Definition Capital, Impatient Ventures, Valhalla Ventures, Banter Capital, and Dmitri Alperovitch. Deterrence is a defense technology company automating the production of reliable, safe energetics at scale using its hardware-software platform. (source: VC News Daily)

Kansas City, MO’s startup, Raven Space Systems, closed a $2 million pre-seed round led by Backswing Ventures with participation from 46 Venture Capital, Mana Ventures, What If Ventures, and Cape Fear Ventures. The new capital will go toward the company’s first full-scale manufacturing lines: production-scale 3D printers, mixing systems, and machining. (source: TechCrunch)

Outbound Aerospace has officially closed its pre-seed round. Blue Collective and Antler combined for $1.1 million in the round. (source: LinkedIn)

Colorado startup Locus Lock has raised venture capital to produce global navigation satellite system receivers for maritime, airborne, terrestrial, and space applications. AIN Ventures led Locus Lock’s investment round. Participants included Aurelia Foundry, CreationsVC, Jolt VC, ff Venture Capital, Techstars, and the University of Texas Seed Fund (source: SpaceNews)

AGREEMENTS, PARTNERSHIPS, & CONTRACTS

Anduril has been awarded a $99.7 million Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract and a five-year Program of Record designation by US Space Systems Command to deliver Lattice as a resilient mesh networking capability for the modernization of the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN). (source: Anduril)

Palantir and Anduril are launching a new consortium to ensure that the US government leads the world in artificial intelligence. Their goal is to deliver the technological infrastructure, from the edge to the enterprise, that can enable our government and industry partners to transform America’s world-leading AI advancements into next-generation military and national security capabilities. This partnership is focused on solving two main problems that limit the adoption of AI for national security purposes. (source: Anduril)

Shield AI announced it is expanding its work with Palantir to develop and deliver large-scale command and control of autonomous uncrewed systems, including operations in GPS- and communications-denied environments. With Warp Speed, Palantir’s manufacturing OS for American re-industrialization, Shield AI is doubling down on its commitment to delivering scalable, AI-powered solutions to protect service members and civilians. By leveraging Shield AI’s advanced Hivemind software development kit, along with Palantir’s suite of powerful software solutions—including enterprise resource planning, geospatial intelligence, and operational decision-making tools—the partnership combines the strengths of both companies to address the most critical defense challenges. (source: Shield AI)

El Segundo, CA’s Skyryse, the creator of SkyOS^™ , the world's first universal operating system for flight, has signed a strategic partnership with Ace Aeronautics (“ACE”), a major reseller of Black Hawk helicopters around the world. The agreement paves the way for Skyryse and ACE to equip hundreds of Black Hawk helicopters with SkyOS, transforming the highly-capable Black Hawk into the world’s safest and simplest aircraft to fly. ‍Under the partnership, ACE’s facility in Guntersville, AL, will serve as the primary installation hub for retrofitting Black Hawk helicopters with SkyOS. (source: Skyryse)

Atomic Alchemy has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Zeno Power Systems, a leading developer of commercial Radioisotope Power Systems (RPSs). Zeno Power’s innovative power systems convert heat from radioisotopes into a reliable and consistent supply of clean energy for commercial and government customers in critical environments across space and terrestrial markets. Through this collaboration, Atomic Alchemy expects to supply Zeno Power with strontium-90 (Sr-90), americium-241 (Am-241), and other radioisotopes needed to power RPSs like Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, or “nuclear batteries.” These systems are designed for remote and off-grid environments, such as space and undersea applications. (source: Oklo)

Frontier has facilitated offtake agreements with Terradot, a San Francisco and São Paulo-based carbon removal company. Frontier buyers will pay $27 million to remove 90,000 tons of CO₂ between 2025 and 2029. (source: Frontier)

JOB BOARD

El Segundo-based Durin is a mining technology company developing next-generation exploration drilling hardware and software. It currently has a handful of engineer opportunities worth checking out. Here’s the link to its job board. 

WHAT I’M CONSUMING (AND ENJOYING!) 

📡 Drones, diffuse networks, modern warfare, and more. All covered in Nathan Mintz’s recent Substack, It's the Network Stupid!

📖It’s the time of year for year in reviews and lists! Upfront Ventures’ Nick Kim and Jacques Sisteron list their 2024 LA Hard Tech 50. 

⚙️ I came across this thread (below) on American manufacturing from Andrew McCalip, head of R&D at Varda, and thought it was worth sharing.

HOW I CAN HELP YOU

Some people only know me as “that Space Dirt newsletter guy.” Although I love that moniker, here are 3* ways I can help with your hard tech real estate when the time is right.

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 hard tech real estate market. I can help. And I come with strong references.

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.)

*Not an exhaustive list 💪

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
424.241.4795 | [email protected] 
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