June's Space Dirt 🚀 (mid-month)

More unicorn valuations, my SoCal Hard Tech Landscape map, and some charts I prepared to prove what you’re seeing in your feeds about SoCal’s hard tech growth matches what’s happening on the ground.

All that and a whole lot more.

Let’s go!

Table of Contents

• REAL ESTATE HIGHLIGHTS

• STEALTH NO MORE

• REAL ESTATE CORNER

• NOTABLE FUNDINGS

• AGREEMENTS, PARTNERSHIPS, & CONTRACTS

• HOW I CAN HELP YOU

REAL ESTATE HIGHLIGHTS

Chaos Industries leased 19,000 SF at 132 Maryland St, El Segundo, CA. (source: Me!) 

Astrolab leased 83,000 SF at 3401 Del Amo Blvd, Torrance, CA. (source: Me!) 

Upgrade Energy leased 18,371 SF at 20900-20910 Normandie Ave, Torrance, CA. (source: Me!) 

Kinetic leased 8,000 SF at 8515 S La Cienega Blvd, Inglewood, CA. (source: Me!) 

Tempo Innovations announced its new 33,862 SF headquarters at 7520 Mission Valley Road, in San Diego’s Sorrento Mesa innovation corridor. (source: LinkedIn)

Joby Aviation acquired a 47,500 SF facility near Hollister Municipal Airport in San Benito County in California, adding to its operations in Santa Cruz, Marina, and San Carlos. The Santa Cruz-based maker of eVTOLs, or electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, paid $15M for the 47,500 SF vacant warehouse near the airport. The site will help accelerate Joby’s flight testing program as it moves through the final phase of FAA Type Certification for its electric air taxi. (source: Costar)

Kraus Hamdani Aerospace is expanding its manufacturing capacity footprint with a new facility in Hayward, CA (source: LinkedIn).

Atomic Industries leased 73,336 SF of space at 50479 Birch Drive, Shelby Township, MI. (source: X)

Nox Metals will revitalize a WWII-era 35,000 SF factory in Detroit, MI, this summer. (source: X)

EnergyX and Wildcat Discovery Technologies are investing over $230M to build a "Battery Mecca" in Hooks, TX. This massive joint venture aims to establish a secure domestic supply chain by manufacturing lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) cathode materials—a crucial step away from foreign-dominated battery markets. EnergyX controls approximately 50,000 acres of lithium mining rights underneath the co-located cathode production facility and Lonestar plant within the Smackover Formation — a lithium-rich brine resource that stretches from Florida to Texas. (source: Mining.com)

STEALTH NO MORE

Tenet Industries (YC) is building low-cost, mass-producible defense systems, starting with strike drones. The founding insight is one the entire defense world is now grappling with: the math of modern warfare no longer adds up. A Tomahawk costs $3M. A Patriot interceptor costs $4M. Meanwhile, Russia and Iran are winning the attrition game with $30K Shaheds and $500 FPV drones. Traditional primes optimize for peak performance and treat manufacturing as an afterthought, which is how you end up outspent and outscaled. Tenet reverses the engineering process. They start with target unit economics and manufacturing constraints, then design the product backward from there. Their first product, Midsummer, is a kamikaze quadcopter that assembles in under two minutes, uses one PCB instead of four, and costs less than comparable drones currently deployed in Ukraine. The same platform extends to loitering munitions and missiles. Founders Emil Falk, Fabian Andersson, and Hugo Frisk frame it cleanly: the primes are building Bugattis and Ferraris. Tenet is building the F-150 for defense. (source: Y Combinator)

Ambrosia Energy emerged from stealth to deploy what it calls the fastest, lowest-cost continuous renewable power in the U.S. The company is a fully vertically integrated solar-plus-battery developer, building 20-100 MW projects now with gigawatt-scale ambitions ahead. Ambrosia is backed by DFJ Growth. The technical edge is in speed and cost: the company developed its own battery pack design and a proprietary solar installation method to accelerate deployment and reduce cost, achieving what it claims is 99.9% reliable off-grid renewable power. That off-grid, continuous reliability figure is the key. It's what makes solar-plus-storage viable as firm power rather than intermittent generation. Benjamin Longmeir is a Co-founder and the CEO. Sara Spangelo is a Cofounder and President. Spangelo and her co-founder, CEO Ben Longmier, previously worked on Starlink at SpaceX, which had acquired their startup, Swarm. (source: TechCrunch)

Surtr Defense Systems (YC P26) is building ParallaxOS, an open operating system for drone defense. The problem it solves is one every counter-drone operator knows intimately: a wall of screens from incompatible systems, each with its own interface and data format, with the operator's brain forced to serve as the fusion engine, mentally correlating detections under extreme time pressure. Integrating a new sensor into existing command-and-control takes months and millions of dollars. ParallaxOS fuses data from any sensor or effector into a single unified threat picture, with AI fire control and engagement recommendations in one interface, a human in the loop. Built on open standards, it works out of the box with common interoperability protocols and adapts proprietary sensor APIs in days rather than months. Partners own their integrations; customers own their data. Both founders are autonomy engineers who built and shipped autonomous systems for Group 3 aircraft in active combat theaters: CEO Anshul Ahluwalia comes from Shield AI, CTO Cameron Fiore from Anduril. (source: LinkedIn and Y Combinator)

Maquoketa Research (YC) is building the intelligence layer for drones, starting with terminal guidance. The problem is specific and battle-proven: modern drone warfare is increasingly constrained by operator workload and electronic warfare. Low-cost FPV drones have become a dominant battlefield tool, but they depend heavily on skilled operators and uninterrupted control links during the most difficult phase of flight, terminal engagement. Many missions fail right at the end due to jamming, target occlusion, or operator error. Maquoketa builds drone-agnostic terminal guidance modules that let existing platforms autonomously track and engage targets after an operator designates them. The system combines onboard sensing, compute, communications, and a proprietary target-tracking algorithm to maintain lock under adverse conditions, all on hardware cheap enough for expendable systems. The bigger vision: the future of military drones will be defined less by individual airframes and more by shared intelligence layers that standardize compute, sensing, and communications across heterogeneous platforms. Founded by Evan Yeager, Alejandro Hernandez, David Muchow, and Aidan Williams. (source: Y Combinator)

Adialante is redesigning the MRI machine from the ground up. The premise: MRI is the most powerful diagnostic tool in medicine, detecting prostate, breast, and brain cancers earlier and more accurately than any alternative, but the underlying architecture hasn't changed in 40 years. That's why systems cost millions, take months to install, and are deafeningly loud. Most clinics can't offer MRI at all, and most patients never get the scan they need. The company's patented architecture (patents 12,625,209 and 12,372,595, with more pending) cuts hardware by 50%, weight by 80%, and power consumption by 60%, while running whisper-quiet and maintaining full clinical value. Rather than selling million-dollar machines, Adialante brings the scanner directly to clinics in mobile trailers on a per-scan fee. No capital purchase, no installation timeline. Co-founders Efraín Torres, PhD, and Parker Jenkins are building toward a world where annual cancer screening is the norm rather than the exception. (source: LinkedIn and Y Combinator)

Westmag is building American-made robot actuators and drone motors at scale. The company raised $11M in 2025, led by a16z, with participation from Founders Fund, Lux Capital, NFDG, and Menlo Ventures. Since then, it has been building industrial capacity, working up the supply chain, and securing high-volume customers. It's now ramping production at its South San Francisco factory to deliver against committed offtake orders. The mission is straightforward and pointed: become the great American motor and actuator company, delivering millions of drone motors and robot actuators to the surging domestic and global market. Actuators and motors are the core physical components of every robot and every drone, and right now, the supply chain for them runs almost entirely through China. David Hansen is a Cofounder and CEO. Jordan Sanders is a Cofounder and COO. (source: X and a16z)

REAL ESTATE CORNER

In case you missed it, here’s my updated SoCal Hard Tech Landscape map. We’re up to 279 companies in the region. As always, primes aren’t included.

Based on this map, I crunched some data to show the growth of Southern California’s hard tech ecosystem. I leaned on Crunchbase for the funding numbers (which are cumulative since January 1, 2022).

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NOTABLE FUNDINGS

Prometheus, the physical AI startup co-founded by Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj, the former co-founder of Verily, Google’s life sciences unit, announced it raised $12 at a $41B valuation. The new funds came from Bezos, as well as from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock, among others. This is the second fundraise round for Prometheus, which launched late last year with an initial raise of $6.2B, according to CNBC. Prometheus is building what it calls an “artificial general engineer” — software capable of automating the design and manufacturing of complex physical systems, from jet engines to drug compounds. (source: TechCrunch)

Axiom Space, the leader in commercial human space exploration, today announced the final close of its previously reported financing at more than $525M, oversubscribed amid growing investor demand. The upsize reflected an opportunistic extension driven by continued institutional and strategic interest in Axiom Space's leadership of the commercial low-Earth orbit transition and the United States' return to the Moon. The close brought new capital onto Axiom Space's cap table alongside the investors who anchored the round earlier this year. This positions the company to accelerate execution against its core programs: human spaceflight, spacesuits, and Axiom Station – the commercial successor to the International Space Station. MUFG Bank, Ltd., Japan’s largest bank, joined the round as a new investor, alongside continued participation from existing backers. (source: Axiom Space)

Impulse Space has raised $500M in Series D funding. The round was co-led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC, bringing the company’s total capital raised to over $1B. Additional participating investors include Founder’s Fund, Lux Capital, and Linse Capital. (source: Impulse Space)

Helion, the fusion startup backed by Sam Altman, announced on Thursday that it had raised $465M in a new funding round that values the company at $15.5B. The cash infusion lands as Helion is racing to complete Orion, its first power plant. The startup has set an aggressive timeline to deploy fusion power to the grid, as early as 2028 if it can deliver on the terms of its deal with Microsoft. The startup last raised $425M in January 2025. Altogether, Helion said it has raised $1.5B. The new round, a Series G, was led by Thrive Capital with a long list of participants, including new investors Alta Park Capital, Anti Fund, BoxGroup, Lux Capital, Peak XV Partners, and Bill Ford, along with existing investors, which include Capricorn Technology Impact Funds, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mithril Capital, Dustin Moskovitz through Good Ventures Foundation, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and a university endowment fund. (source: TechCrunch)

Mach Industries has raised a $300M Series C at a $1.8B valuation. The raise nearly quadruples the valuation of the company in a year. In June 2025, Mach raised $100M at a $470M valuation. Other investors include Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Khosla Ventures. The round was led by deep tech fund Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital. (source: TechCrunch)

Focused Energy recently raised an oversubscribed $240M Series A round, one of the largest early-stage rounds for a fusion power startup. The new round, announced last week, brings the company's total private capital raised to $300M, the company told TechCrunch. The startup has also received $200M in grants, collectively making it one of the most heavily funded fusion startups. RWE was the main investor in the Series A. The round also included participation from the German Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation (SPRIND), Prime Movers Lab, and the European Innovation Council Fund. (source: Yahoo! Finance)

Apex, the world’s leading manufacturer of productized, configurable satellite bus platforms, announced it has raised over $200M in new growth funding, nearly doubling the company’s valuation to $2.3B, just months after surpassing a $1B valuation. The round was led by Glade Brook Capital Partners and co-led by Washington Harbour Partners, with support from new and existing investors. The new funding will accelerate Apex’s expansion of its high-rate satellite manufacturing campus, support further vertical integration of key subsystems, and fund ahead-of-need manufacturing of its productized satellite platforms as demand for proliferated commercial and national security constellations continues to grow. (source: Apex)

Standard Bots announced its $200M Series C funding round at a $1B valuation, led by
Robo Strategy and existing investors, including General Catalyst. Standard Bots is now America’s largest manufacturer of AI-native industrial robots. It is also expanding its Glen Cove, NY, facility to 70,000 SF to scale our vertically integrated production process. (source: X)

Endurance Energy, a startup that has raised a $54M Series A to eventually harness terawatts of geothermal energy deep in the ocean, TechCrunch has learned. Founders Fund led the round, with participation from Ascend, Construct Capital, Felicis Ventures, First Round Capital, Point72 Ventures, Riot Ventures, and Voyager Ventures. The new funding will allow the company to develop its plans for power plants at a time of surging energy demand from AI data. (source: TechCrunch)

Layup Parts has raised a $42M Series A. Marlinspike led the round.  Also participating: Cerberus Ventures, Pinegrove Venture Partners, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Haystack. (source: LinkedIn)

NewOrbit Space has raised an oversubscribed $18.5M Series A led by Voyager Ventures, bringing its total funding to $27.8M. Also participating: Atlantic.vc, Lifeline Ventures, LGF, Illusian, CustOS AI, David Kirk & Lawrence Leuschner. The company is building satellites for very low Earth orbit (180–250 km), where it says image resolution and signal strength are significantly improved, starting with its NEO-1 satellite planned for launch in 2028. The new capital will support development of its air-breathing propulsion system and the buildout of its Thames Valley production facility, as it pushes to commercialize sustained operations in an orbit band long considered too hostile for commercial use. (source: LinkedIn)

Podium Automation has raised an $18M Series A led by Construct Capital, with participation from a16z, Transition, Sunflower, and Banter to help our customers build the automated world faster. (source: LinkedIn)

Fabri raised $13.5M in funding from Lavrock Ventures, Balerion Space Ventures, RTX Ventures, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Marlinspike, Tenon Ventures, and SBXi to advance what comes next. Fabri builds software-defined investment casting foundries producing precision metal castings for the USA's most critical industries. (source: LinkedIn)

Manufacturing startup Volund Manufacturing announced that it has raised a $12M seed round led by Root Ventures and Squadra to build low-cost gas turbine engines. New investor Output Capital also participated in the round, and Marlinspike, Alpha Delta Ventures, and First In returned to the cap table. Volund founder and CEO Eric Hostetler told Tectonic that his team—now up to 14 people—will use the money to scale up R&D and “supercharge engineering efforts.” (source: Tectonic)

Nox Metals announced an $11.5M seed round led by Hyperion, with participation from Palmer Luckey, Y Combinator, Jared Friedman, RoboStrategy, Operator Collective, DTX, Alumni Ventures, and others. (source: X)

U.S.-Israeli robotics startup Shifters announced that it has raised a $10.2M seed round led by Ace Capital Partners, bringing total funding to $15M. Other participants in the round include Aurelius Capital Management, Corner Ventures, and Arkin Capital. (source: Tectonic)

Reaxiomatic, an aerospace and defense startup focused on rethinking and refreshing critical platforms and infrastructure for the Department of War, today announced the close of its $7.25M pre-seed funding round. The oversubscribed round is led by Scout Ventures and NVP Capital, with participation from Bling Capital.  While Reax is not yet publicly releasing specific product details, the company is focused on rapid development of large, strategic hardware systems, enabling faster timelines from initial concept through operational use, with the goal of massively increasing the rate at which new capabilities reach the US and allied warfighters. (source: Reaxiomatic)

 Orbital, a space infrastructure company building AI data centers in Low Earth Orbit, today announced a $5M pre-seed round to accelerate development of its orbital compute satellites, designed to harness solar energy to power intelligence. The round was led by a16z speedrun and includes participation from Basis Set, Human Element, Wayfinder, Antler, Anti Fund, Ascent, Rubik, Zero Knowledge Ventures, LYVC, Feld Ventures, New Legacy, FNDR, UpHonest, and Asterisk. The financing funds Orbital's first in-orbit technology demonstration, Pathfinder, and the initial development of Orbital-1, the first purpose-built satellite for AI compute. The round precedes a larger financing round as Orbital moves from validation to scaled manufacturing and constellation deployment, and builds Factory-1, its manufacturing facility in Los Angeles. (source: Yahoo! Finance)

Clear Robotics raised $1.75M in pre-Series A funding to scale zero-emission autonomous ships. ShipsFocus Ventures 船狂 led the round, joined by Katapult Ocean, SGInnovate, M7 Holdings, MGS Ventures, and strategic partners. The company builds AI-enabled electric vessels for ports, governments, and marine operators. The near-term jobs are practical: waterway cleanup, pollution recovery, port surveying, bathymetric survey, and civil maritime monitoring.  (source: LinkedIn)

Juno Propulsion announced the successful close of a $1.4M pre-seed financing round led by SOSV, with participation from Hypernova Fund, Leslie Ventures, Activate, Collaborative Fund, Safar Partners, and Cape Fear Ventures. The financing will support the development and flight qualification of Project IRIS, Juno’s rotating detonation combustion (RDC) propulsion system. The company is preparing to be the first on-orbit demonstration of an RDC-powered spacecraft propulsion system, with launch currently targeted for the first quarter of 2027. (source: LinkedIn)

Manifest Space announced the close of an oversubscribed $1.15M Pre-Seed round to build onboard space traffic awareness for every spacecraft, beginning with technology that makes satellites easier to find, identify, and recover during the riskiest phases of a mission. Hypernova Fund joined as Manifest's first institutional investor, alongside E2MC Ventures, C2 Ventures, Marlboro Lane Ventures, P3A, and strategic backing from NEC X. Angel investors Steve Johnston, Andy Bette, and Rikard Steiber also participated. The round drew backers from across aerospace, deep technology, and venture capital, including C2 Ventures' first investment in the space sector. (source: Manifest Space)

AGREEMENTS, PARTNERSHIPS, & CONTRACTS

Anduril announced that it has won a $363M contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for “more than 200 Extended Range Sentry Towers (XRST)…to expand autonomous situational awareness across a much larger portion of the Southwest Border.” (source: Tectonic)

Voyager Technologies to acquire Astrobotic in $300M deal, expanding lunar infrastructure ambitions. This move significantly expands Voyager's capabilities by positioning it to support long-term human and robotic operations on the Moon. Voyager will acquire the Pittsburgh-based company for an initial consideration of $171M, consisting of $162M in cash and stock, plus the assumption of approximately $9M in debt. The agreement also includes up to $129M in additional earnout payments tied to future performance milestones. (source: X)

Drone startup Mach Industries acquired rocket-maker Exquadrum for $50M in cash and equity. The acquisition provides Mach with Exquadrum’s more than two decades of intellectual property and propulsion tech required to build and test superfast hypersonic weapons. The acquisition expands Mach Industries' ability to design, manufacture, and rapidly iterate on next-generation unmanned systems by integrating energetics system development and manufacturing infrastructure directly into its platform architecture. (source: The Wall St Journal and PR Newswire)

Fabric8Labs announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by TDK Corporation, a global technology and innovation leader specializing in electronic solutions. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory clearances. By entering TDK's global manufacturing network, Fabric8Labs' ECAM technology would gain the production scale, supply chain resiliency, and operational infrastructure needed to serve a rapidly growing base of enterprise customers across data center infrastructure and next-generation electronics.v (source: PR Newswire)

Oshkosh Defense and Forterra have received a $92M production award for block II of the Marine Corps’ Remotely Operated Ground Unit for Expeditionary Fires, which comes as the Pentagon's first large-scale production contract for ground vehicle autonomy. Under the award, prime contractor Oshkosh will deliver Joint Light Tactical Vehicles integrated with Forterra’s AutoDrive autonomy capabilities, giving the Marine Corps a self-driving vehicle for its ship-killing Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System. (source: Inside Defense)

Northrop Grumman announced a partnership with Apex to collaborate on the development of space-based interceptor (SBI) satellites as part of the U.S. Golden Dome missile-defense shield. Having demonstrated key capabilities through ground tests this year, Northrop Grumman is on track to deliver on-orbit missile defense capabilities with Apex in 2027, according to the announcement. (source: Payload)

Automated manufacturing startup Deterrence is teaming up with General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems (GDOTS) to deploy manufacturing software and AI across GDOTS facilities, beginning with its 155mm artillery plant in Mesquite, TX. (source: Tectonic)

Antares announced that its Mark-0 microreactor achieved initial criticality at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) under U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) authorization — making Antares the first private company to bring an advanced reactor to criticality under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program. The demonstration was conducted in partnership with DOE, INL, and BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT), with integration and observation support from the U.S. Army. (source: X)

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] 
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