February's Space Dirt 🚀 (month-end)

Another packed Space Dirt. Here’s a simple rundown to get you going:

• 11 Real estate highlights

• 6 Companies emerging from stealth

• Real estate corner - types of real estate setups for startups

• Gundo sublease available

• 15 Notable fundings

• 10 Agreements, partnerships & contracts

• What I’m consuming - so much good stuff

Enjoy!

REAL ESTATE HIGHLIGHTS

Launchpad.build leased 13,406 SF at 1320-1330 E Franklin Ave, El Segundo, CA. (source: Me!)

Amca leased 30,698 SF at 1320-1330 E Franklin Ave, El Segundo, CA. (source: Me!)

Vital Lyfe leased 37,844 SF at 1315 Storm Pkwy, Torrance, CA. (source: Me!)

Orbital Operations leased 21,522 SF at 2392-2396 E Artesia Blvd, Long Beach, CA. (source: Me!)

Gradient Robotics leased 8,250 SF at 13020 Yukon Ave, Hawthorne, CA. (source: Me!)

Sift leased 20,000 SF at 4505 Glencoe Ave, Marina Del Rey, CA. (source: Me!)

Neros leased 251,606 SF at 19681 Pacific Gateway Dr, Torrance, CA. Its new HQ will be known as Millennium One (M-1) and will serve as the engine for producing American drones and components not in the tens of thousands, but in the millions. This facility is designed to secure domestic manufacturing capacity for our most vital sub-systems. We are prioritizing the immediate onshoring of high-risk components to ensure that the core technologies driving our systems are immune to foreign supply threats. (source: Neros)

Swarm Aero, headquartered in Oxnard, CA, announced the opening of its new 80,000 SF advanced manufacturing facility at Drake Field in Fayetteville, AR. (source: Business Wire)

Mach Industries announced the opening of its new hub in San Francisco, CA. This new location will strengthen collaboration across advanced technology ecosystems and support long-term growth amid increasing demand from the U.S. military and allied partners. Mach Industries' headquarters will remain in Huntington Beach at Forge 1, their 115,000 SF facility dedicated to engineering, rapid prototyping, and advanced manufacturing. (source: PR Newswire)

Aetherflux is expanding to Seattle, WA. The Seattle hub will serve as the core center for its satellite development. (source: X)

Gallatin AI announced the opening of its Austin, TX office, putting the company's engineering and delivery teams in direct proximity to the Fort Hood and Army Sustainment Commands, whose daily planning challenges drive its software roadmap. (source: PR Newswire)

STEALTH NO MORE

Project Omega emerged from stealth with $12M in seed funding led by Starship Ventures, with participation from Mantis Ventures, Buckley Ventures, Decisive Point, and Slow Ventures. The company is rebuilding America's nuclear fuel cycle end-to-end by recycling spent nuclear fuel into long-duration, high-density power sources and critical materials for the nuclear industry. For over 50 years, the US has treated spent nuclear fuel as a liability and currently does not recycle it, leaving critical isotopes and energy sources underutilized. Project Omega is turning it into a strategic asset, partnering with ARPA-E to demonstrate a safe, commercially viable pathway to spent nuclear fuel recycling while creating domestic energy security and economic growth. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory recently tested and successfully produced a working proof of concept of the company's novel nuclear power system within months, led by senior scientist Dr. David Koch. The technology focuses on enabling long-duration power solutions for critical national security needs and supplying fuel for advanced nuclear reactors. Co-founded by CEO Staff Sheehan, who notes that AI acceleration, electrified manufacturing, and new industrial systems are driving energy demand far faster than today's grid can provide, with nuclear remaining the only power source capable of matching that trajectory—yet the US has never built the ecosystem required to enable its full potential. (source: BusinessWire)

Critical Materials Group emerged from stealth to address a critical bottleneck in the defense industrial base: producing military-grade energetics at scale using automated manufacturing. The Army has repeatedly identified energetics production as a "single point of failure," with the bulk of C-4 and its primary ingredient RDX produced at a single government-owned facility, the Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Tennessee, operated by BAE. Decades of consolidation have left a handful of primes controlling the energetics market, leading to production chokepoints, demand far outstripping supply, and antiquated manual manufacturing processes that remain dangerous. CMG is building semi-automated C-4 production designed to transition to full automation, bringing decentralized capacity online with faster and safer production rates. The company has a bootstrapped plant coming online in the next few months with deliveries starting this summer, is already under contract with one foreign government, and is in discussions with US stakeholders. Founded by Kevin Capozzoli, former Mach Industries President and Chief Strategy Officer, and a longtime Army Special Forces operator, CMG's mission is to increase capacity —not to displace incumbents—by commercializing technologies that enable faster, more distributed production across the defense industrial base. (source: Tectonic)

Terranox AI is the first vertically integrated AI-powered uranium discovery company, finding economic uranium deposits in North America using AI trained on 70+ years of exploration outcomes. The nuclear renaissance depends on uranium fuel, but global production needs to quadruple by 2050 while the world already faces a supply deficit today with depleting stockpiles. The largest existing mines will approach end-of-life simultaneously starting in the mid-2030s, and new mines take 10-15 years from discovery to production. Traditional exploration still works like the 1960s with hit rates below 1%, driven by intuition and outsourced workflows while decades of exploration data sits trapped in legacy PDFs and hand-drawn maps. Terranox built a system with three core capabilities: multi-modal geoscience intelligence that extracts and processes fragmented legacy data into a unified exploration context, prospectivity mapping using uranium-specific AI models trained on decades of exploration outcomes to identify high-potential areas humans would miss, and sequential decision intelligence that determines optimal next actions to maximize information gain per dollar spent. The result is a compounding learning flywheel where every drill hole makes predictions better across all projects. Founded by Jade Checlair (PhD Geophysics from UChicago, developed statistical methods for planetary discovery adopted by NASA flagship missions, 3.5 years at BCG leading nuclear and mining strategy, ex-NASA Ames) and Leeav Lipton (8 years building AI/ML systems at Borealis AI, astrophysics background, ex-NASA JPL scientist on low-cost remote sensing tech). The company is launching its own exploration projects in North America to ensure the nuclear renaissance has the fuel it needs. (source: Y Combinator)

General Astronautics is building autonomous robots for research and manufacturing in microgravity. Microgravity enables better pharmaceuticals through protein crystallization with fewer defects, purer semiconductors, and flawless optical fibers by eliminating gravity-induced flaws, but astronaut time is the bottleneck. NASA estimates crew time on ISS at $130K per hour, and on commercial stations, it's more than three times that. Crews have to sleep, rotate home, and pick which experiments to run, meaning most of the work that could happen in space simply doesn't. General Astronautics is building robotic systems that handle laboratory work—pipetting, sample prep, plate handling, reagent mixing—with the precision and autonomy to operate without crew. The goal is to make microgravity research and manufacturing scalable rather than bottlenecked by how many people you can put in orbit. The team comes from SpaceX, Caltech, and Carnegie Mellon, with backgrounds in robotics, spacecraft systems, and their intersection. Bram Schork is the Co-founder and CEO. Shibo Zhou is the Co-founder and CTO. They started the company because the limiting factor in space was never the science; it's the capacity to do it at scale. (source: Y Combinator)

DroneTector is building millimeter-wave radar and integrated sensor systems to detect small drones that existing systems miss. Small drones have become a security problem—cheap, widely available, and increasingly capable—showing up at airports, critical infrastructure, prisons, and defense environments. Detecting them reliably remains hard because most drone detection systems weren't designed for small, low-cost drones, resulting in common false positives and missed real threats. DroneTector's millimeter-wave radar is engineered specifically for small drones and integrates with camera and acoustic arrays to deliver reliable detection against the most challenging targets. The sensors operate as standalone solutions or as part of distributed detection networks, highly scalable and adaptable to complex environments. The team consists of PhDs from top UK universities and has been supported by the UK MoD's Defence and Security Accelerator, NATO DIANA, and the Royal Academy of Engineering. Matthew Moore (CEO) holds a PhD from the University of St Andrews, specializing in millimeter-wave radar for drone detection, with extensive RF engineering experience, and is a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow. Thomas Doherty (CTO) holds a PhD from Oxford with a decade of experience in optical and laser technologies. Jordina Frances de Mas (COO) holds a PhD from the University of St Andrews, with a focus on automated reasoning and expertise in machine learning and algorithmic optimization. (source: Y Combinator)

OctaPulse is building robotics and computer vision to automate fish inspection and processing for aquaculture farms. The $350B global aquaculture industry needs to grow 30%+ by 2030 to meet seafood demand, but most farms still grade and sort fish by hand—slow, stressful for the animals, and limited to tiny sample sizes that make it impossible to optimize breeding, feeding, or harvest timing. OctaPulse cuts inspection time from five minutes to under 30 seconds per fish with 95%+ accuracy, delivering automated phenotyping, grading, and quality control with no handling required. The company is already deployed with Riverence, North America's largest trout producer, on a six-figure annual contract and is now integrating delta robotics for automated sorting. Paul L. Grech leads commercial and partnerships, bringing deep industry relationships as a Future Leader in the National Fisheries Institute and Coalition for Sustainable Aquaculture. Rohan Singh leads engineering with robotics and AI experience from CMU, ASML, Toyota, Tesla, and NVIDIA. (source: YCombinator)

REAL ESTATE CORNER

EL SEGUNDO SUBLEASE

If you're looking for an El Segundo hard tech sublease, check out the pics above of this fully furnished, move-in-ready office. Move in and start working on day one, without costly setup fees.

If this is too big for your needs, there is a shared space option as well.

More details below.

Address: 2101 E El Segundo Blvd, El Segundo, CA
RSF: 5,052 SF (includes 4 offices & 1 conference room)
Note: Shared space option, too
Monthly Rent: Negotiable
Expiration Date: December 31, 2027
Available: Now
Parking: 20+ parking spaces

Reach out if you'd like to learn more.

NOTABLE FUNDINGS

Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz are co-leading a fundraising round for Anduril that could nearly double the defense tech startup’s valuation. Anduril is seeking to raise about $4B with both firms jointly leading the round, said two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The fundraising would value Anduril at about $60B. (source: Bloomberg)

AI chip startup MatX has raised $500M in a Series B funding round led by an investment fund founded by a former OpenAI researcher. Situational Awareness co-led the round with Jane Street. Other investors include Spark Capital, Triatomic Capital, Harpoon, Alchip Technologies, and Marvell. Launched in 2024 by former Google engineers Reiner Pope and Mike Gunter, MatX is aiming to build processors specifically designed to support large language models (LLMs). In a LinkedIn post announcing the fundraise, Pope said the company’s forthcoming MatX One chip will deliver “much higher throughput than any other chip while also achieving the lowest latency.” (source: Data Center Dynamics)

Intuitive Machines announced a $175M strategic equity investment led by unnamed “global institutional investors.” The money will allow the Moon-bound company, which acquired Lantaris Space Systems last month, to invest in comms and data-processing tech. The money will allow the Moon-bound company to invest in comms and data-processing tech. Specifically, Intuitive Machines plans to build a “solar system internet independent of Earth,” according to a press release. That includes growing its Near Space Network Services—a series of comms and navigation infrastructure that will be used by missions operating from Earth, to beyond the Moon. The goal? To offer connectivity all the way to Mars, and to enable energy-heavy data-processing missions. (source: Payload)

Revel raised $150M at a $1B+ valuation only 15 months after founding. The $150M in Series B funding is aimed at accelerating its expansion across aerospace, defense, robotics, and industrial markets. The round was led by Index Ventures, with major participation from Redpoint Ventures and returning investors Thrive Capital, Felicis, and Abstract Ventures, as well as prominent angels such as Dylan Field, Figma's co-founder and CEO. Revel replaces decades-old infrastructure — much of it built in the 1980s and 1990s — with a modern platform that enables engineers to visually configure hardware systems, monitor live telemetry, and issue commands safely in real time. (source: Molly O’Shea)

Heron Power, founded by former Tesla Senior VP Drew Baglino, has raised $140M in Series B funding to produce advanced solid-state transformers designed to modernize the U.S. electrical grid and support surging demand from AI data centers. The Santa Cruz-based company is building a giga-scale factory to create hardware that is 30% smaller, 75% lighter, and more efficient than traditional, century-old transformers. The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism Fund and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. (source: Forbes)

Aalyria announced a $100M funding round that values the Californian venture at $1.3B, supporting deployment of laser terminals and software for dynamically routing data across space, air and ground networks. Battery Ventures and J2 Ventures led the Series B round, with participation from DYNE and other investors. The funding follows growing demand for narrow, high-throughput directional links that can improve speed and security but also add operational complexity as motion, weather and other line-of-sight constraints risk disrupting connectivity. Aalyria, spun out of Google’s parent Alphabet four years ago, says its Spacetime platform can coordinate those links in real time, allocating capacity and routing traffic as satellites, aircraft and ground terminals move. Spacetime is also designed to help multi-orbit networks respond more quickly to disruptions, such as shifting capacity toward areas where terres (source: SpaceNews)

Deep Fission has raised $80M in new financing. The company sold more than five million restricted shares at a fixed price of $15 per share. Seaport Global Securities and The Benchmark Company acted as agents. Key investors included Ed Eisler of EE Holdings and Mark Tompkins of Montrose Capital. Both supported earlier rounds in 2025. (source: Ventureburn)

Chariot Defense just raised a $34M Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz, to scale command of power on the battlefield. The round was joined by existing investors General Catalyst and XYZ Venture Capital with other new participation by DCVC, LMNT Ventures, Marlinspike, Overmatch Ventures, Shield Capital, Ensemble VC, and Trenches Capital. In under a year, Chariot moved from stealth to revenue and from prototype to force-on-force exercises. Amphora systems are now supporting U.S. Army units, DIU, and commercial customers who recognize that resilient power underpins autonomy, sensing, strike, and C2. (source: LinkedIn)

Smack Technologies has raised $32M in Seed and Series A funding. Point72 Ventures led the Seed. Felicis, First In, Palumni VC, Fulcrum Venture Group, and Anomaly Fund also participated. Geodesic Capital and Costanoa Ventures led the Series A. Scribble Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Washington Harbour Partners LP, and Fortitude Ventures also participated. (source: LinkedIn)

Terra Industries, a defense technology company building autonomous security systems to protect Africa’s critical infrastructure, has raised an additional $22M in funding, led by Lux Capital. The strategic funding extends its previously announced $11.8M round, bringing total funding in the round to $34M. The extension included participation from existing investors, including 8VC, Nova Global, Silent Ventures, Belief Capital, Tofino Capital and Resilience17 Capital, founded by Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola, as well as angel investors such as Jordan Nel and Jared Leto. The round came together quickly, in under two weeks, reflecting strong investor confidence in Terra Industries’ role in safeguarding critical infrastructure and helping address insecurity and terrorism across Africa. (source: Terran Industries)

Nucleus Security, a Sarasota, FL-based unified vulnerability and exposure management company, has raised $20M in a Series C funding round led by Delta-v Capital. The company plans to use the funds to grow its operations and support further development. (source: Startup Rise)

Agile Space Industries closes $17M Series A. With demand for its propulsion systems on the rise, Agile raised a $17M Series A to ensure it can fulfill its orders without increasing its delivery times, according to CEO Chris Pearson. The round was led by Caruso Ventures and Howdy Partners, with additional participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, Veteran Ventures Capital, Denver Ventures, and Cortado Ventures. The Series A brings Agile’s total fundraising to about $40M. (source: Payload)

Sophia Space closed a $10M seed round to accelerate the development and testing of its in-orbit computing technology, laying the groundwork for operational orbital data centers by the 2030s. The round was led by Alpha Funds, KDDI Green Partners Fund, and Unlock Venture Partners, and brings the company’s total funding to $13.5M. (source: Payload)

Breaker Industries closed a $6M round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners with follow-on investment from Main Sequence. Breaker is on a mission to enable the ultimate robot teammates. Ensuring operators can orchestrate teams of robots like they would any other human teammate, whether driving, flying, or fighting. (source: LinkedIn)

Seagate Space has closed its pre-seed round at $1.5M+. DraperU Ventures, Phaseshift Ventures, and New World Angels participated in the round. (source: X)

Rebound Technologies, a Denver, CO-based developer of the IcePoint thermal energy storage and cooling platform, received an undisclosed strategic investment led by Taronga Group. The round also saw participation from Innopower, Skyview Ventures, and True North Institute LLP. The company plans to use the funds to expand manufacturing, accelerate commercial deployments, and drive ongoing product innovation. (source: LinkedIn)

Join over 3,100 of the best & brightest in the hard tech community and subscribe to the only commercial real estate hard tech newsletter, Space Dirt.

AGREEMENTS, PARTNERSHIPS, & CONTRACTS

The Pentagon announced that mass-producible hypersonic missile company Castelion was awarded a $50M contract with the US Navy for the “full-scale prototypes, flight testing, and operational fielding” of its Blackbeard missile, which COO Sean Pitt told Tectonic will be an air-launched variant. The Los Angeles-based startup is also developing a ground-launched version for the Army. The contract—a SBIR Phase III award—is designed around an air-launched variant of the Blackbeard. (source: Tectonic)

CenCore has secured a $44M contract from the Department of War (DOW), in partnership with the Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic (NIWC Atlantic), to deliver modular facilities that address vital mission requirements. This initiative is intended to strengthen the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) supply chain by mitigating vulnerabilities that pose risks to the development and sustainment of key national security capabilities. Under this contract, CenCore will design, manufacture, deliver, assemble, and install up to eight relocatable modular facilities, each approximately 4,800 SF, at NIWC Atlantic sites in the Charleston, South Carolina region. The single-story facilities will be placed on pre-existing concrete pads. These modular facilities will deliver secure, scalable, and rapidly deployable infrastructure, accelerating construction schedules, and offering greater flexibility compared to conventional building methods. (source: Cencore)

Anduril announced that it has received $43.7M in Defense Production Act Title III funding to expand solid rocket motor (SRM) production in the US. The company says the funding will be used to “increase the efficiency and resiliency of [Anduril’s SRM factory] through expanding test fire infrastructure for more complex motors, increasing storage capacity, and acquiring common production tooling in manufacturing-level quantities. (source: Tectonic)

Wraithwatch has been selected for a $30M contract to deploy its agentic cyber defense swarms across multiple federal agencies with critical national security missions. (source: LinkedIn)

South Bay companies, CX2 and Neros, announced that they’re teaming up to put CX2’s c-UAS tech onto Neros’ made-in-the-USA quadcopter drones. Specifically, the two companies will build Vadris—CX2’s RF-seeking drone pilot locator—onto Neros’ Archer FPV drone. The idea is to create an all-in-one platform that can “find, fix, and finish” (CX2’s verbiage) adversarial drones and their operators. With this new collab, CX2 will plug a Vadris onto a Neros Archer, effectively making it an airborne sensing-and-seeking platform. (source: Tectonic)

Electric trucking startup Harbinger has acquired autonomous driving software company Phantom AI in an effort to vertically integrate more technology and create new revenue streams for the young company. The acquisition, which is Harbinger’s first, is part of the startup’s plan to steadily expand its portfolio beyond the electric truck chassis it’s been building and selling for the last year. Harbinger announced it has already lined up a customer for Phantom’s advanced driver-assistance tech it just acquired. German automotive technology giant ZF Group has agreed to license that tech from Harbinger, and plans to sell it to automakers for use in their passenger cars. (Terms of the two deals were not disclosed.) (source: TechCrunch)

CesiumAstro, a global provider of space and defense communications systems and satellites, announced the acquisition of Vidrovr, an artificial intelligence (AI) company specializing in real-time multimodal signal analysis. The acquisition accelerates CesiumAstro’s strategy to embed AI directly into space telecommunications and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) infrastructure, enabling intelligent radio frequency (RF) optimization, autonomous operations of payloads and satellites, and reconfigurable AI-enabled edge compute across its product lines. From mission-critical hardware to software, firmware, and waveforms, this acquisition positions CesiumAstro to further elevate its best-in-class digital processors and active phased array technologies. (source: CesiumAstro)

Divergent Technologies and Mach Industries announced a partnership to deliver Venom, a prototype flight demonstration aircraft showing hardware development at software speed. Together, Divergent and Mach Industries are demonstrating a new model for autonomous defense systems, replacing tooling-heavy aerospace processes with a software-defined manufacturing approach that enables rapid iteration, scalable production, and speed to field. With Venom, the companies are showing that advanced manufacturing is not only an efficiency advantage, but it is also a strategic capability that delivers operational systems at the speed, volume, and performance demanded by modern defense missions. (source: Divergent)

Seneca Systems announced a five-year contract with the Aspen Fire Department to bring a Seneca Strike Team of five aircraft plus a Mobile Air Operations Base to Aspen, CO this summer. This marks the first time in history that a U.S. fire department has acquired an AI-driven autonomous aerial suppression system. Aspen Fire Protection District will begin deploying the aircraft, designed to cut wildfire response times, assist in Rx burns, speed mop up operations and force-multiply many core capabilities this summer. Each aircraft carries enough water to create over 50 gallons of finished foam suppressant which it delivers at over 100 PSI, and is built to operate in the difficult terrain that defines the Roaring Fork Valley. (source: Seneca)

SHD Composites, a Cambium Company, announced the further expansion of its manufacturing capabilities with the commissioning of new 1500mm wide format UD prepreg and advanced film coating lines. These strategic investments, based on SHD’s internal manufacturing machine designs, enable SHD to deliver high-performance composite materials at greater scale and width while maintaining the company’s renowned quality, performance, and rapid delivery model. The new assets are engineered to support both rapid turn development programs and high volume manufacturing demands. This expansion directly supports sustained growth across the automotive, marine, recreational, aerospace, and defense markets, where customers are increasingly turning to composite materials to meet stringent performance, weight, and sustainability targets. (source: Cambium)

WHAT I’M CONSUMING (AND ENJOYING!) 

↕️ Cantos Partner Grant Gregory writes about vertical integration and which parts to bring in-house, when, and why those parts compound your advantage.

🤖 Zetta Parnter Annelies Gamble talks to Saman Farid, CEO of Formic, about what needs to happen to rebuild American manufacturing: “Rebuilding the connective tissue underneath our supply chain.”

⚙️ If the following quote interests you, you’ll want to read the rest of Atom Industries Founder, Aaron Slodov’s article, "How to Build American Shenzhen, Fast." “A country with deep, fast, flexible commercial manufacturing can surge production for any purpose. A country with a bloated defense-only supply chain can produce expensive weapons slowly and nothing else.”

🗣 If you like what Aaron Slodov has to say, check out this US vs. China Manufacturing Debate between Aaron and Sam D’Amico, Founder of Impules Labs. Hosted by Ti Morse.

⏩⏪ Balerion Space Ventures delivers another helpful graphic. This Dual-Use technology map by Barbara Savage shows how space, defense, manufacturing, and AI are converging.

💡 Andreesaen Horowitz General Partner Erin Price-Wright shares a recent keynote she gave, “The mindset shift we need to rebuild American factories.”

🛩 Pirate Wires takes us behind the scenes and delivers the complete story of how Anduril’s Fury, an AI-powered unmanned fighter jet, was built. They also detail what’s next: producing an entire fleet of Furies capable of defending America.

HOW I CAN HELP YOU

Here are 3* ways I can help when the time is right:

1. Find a new home for your growing business. You're scaling fast, and you don't have time to become a CRE expert. I do this every day.

2. Sublease your space. Outgrown your office, but don't want to pay two rents? I'll help you find a subtenant.

3. Negotiate your lease renewal. Want to make sure you’re getting a fair deal from your Landlord? In my experience, you can never be too sure. Start 12 months out, so you're not scrambling at the last minute.

Strong references available. Let's talk.

*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] 
Follow me on 𝕏