June's Space Dirt 🚀 (month-end)

Four new fund announcements and eight (8!) acquisitions, including Elon taking Mesh and Rocket Lab acquiring Iridium.

All that and a whole lot more.

Table of Contents

• REAL ESTATE HIGHLIGHTS

• STEALTH NO MORE

• REAL ESTATE CORNER

• NOTABLE FUNDINGS

• AGREEMENTS, PARTNERSHIPS, & CONTRACTS

• WHAT I’M CONSUMING (AND ENJOYING!) 

• HOW I CAN HELP YOU

REAL ESTATE HIGHLIGHTS

Divergent announced its second factory, a 430,000 SF facility in Long Beach, CA. The enhanced manufacturing capabilities and expanded factory footprint will enable Divergent to deliver an 8X increase in annual production output for customer programs across the defense and commercial sectors. (source: X)

Chromalloy Gas Turbine leased 10,883 SF at 568-578 Amapola Ave, Torrance, CA. (source: Me!)

Vuecason leased 8,800 SF at 142 Arena Street, El Segundo, CA. (source: Me!)

Wardstone leased 4,700 SF at 145 Sheldon Street, El Segundo, CA (this is Upgrade Energy’s former space). (source: Me!)

Sensitic Technologies leased 15,367 SF at 73-75 N Vinedo Ave, Pasadena, CA. (source: Me!)

General Matter leased 51,299 SF at 3730 Redondo Beach Ave, Redondo Beach, CA. (source: Me!)

General Matter leased 48,037 SF at 3700 Redondo Beach Ave, Redondo Beach, CA. (source: Me!)

General Matter leased 45,258 SF at 2411 Santa Fe Ave, Redondo Beach, CA. (source: Me!)

Harbinger leased 63,016 SF at 6590 Darin Way, Cypress, CA. (source: Me!)

Muon Space opened its new 130,000 SF satellite manufacturing facility in San Jose, CA. This facility can support production of up to 500 satellites a year, with dedicated cleanrooms, in-house propulsion integration, and a 300kW solar array powering the site. (source: LinkedIn)

Formic celebrated the grand opening of its new 53,000 SF HQ in Bolingbrook, IL, its largest facility to date and five times the size of its previous location. (source: Business Wire)

Foundation Alloy is opening a new 36,000 SF facility in Massachusetts this summer. The new Massachusetts facility and modular production cell are set to grow capacity from pilot-scale today to tons per week by 2027—a 100x increase, built on a modular equipment platform that deploys and scales 10x faster than traditional metals manufacturing. (source: Foundation Alloy)

Unusual Machines announced the signing of a lease for approximately 14,000 SF of manufacturing and operational space in Orlando, FL. The facility will support the Company's growing battery business in connection with its planned acquisition of Upgrade Energy, which is expected to close by mid-third quarter of 2026. The Orlando facility is expected to complement Upgrade Energy's existing California operations and support the continued growth of the Company's battery and power systems business in the United States. (source: Unusual Machines)

Spacegun Ranch is a square-mile test facility offering UAS, propulsion, and explosives testing, just outside Barstow, CA. “If you want to be near a runway, Mojave is a great choice. If being near a runway is a problem, this may be a better fit.” (source: Me!)

Isembard opened its first St. Louis location. (source: LinkedIn)

Isembard is opening a 25,000 SF factory in central London. The new Southwark site is part of a growing global network of software-defined factories producing parts for defense, aerospace, and energy, run on MasonOS, its own manufacturing operating system. (source: LinkedIn)

Dominion Dynamics moved into its new 25,000 SF Ottawa factory, The Radisson. (source: X)

Aerospace startup NordSpace has opened its 60,000 SF Rocket Factory 1 in Markham, Ontario. The new campus marks the company's transition to production, aiming to build orbital launch vehicles and establish sovereign space launch capabilities for Canada. Founded by Rahul Goel, NordSpace is developing launch vehicles, rocket engines, and satellite systems. The factory consolidates its vertically integrated operations to support national security and commercial space missions from Canadian soil. (source: Startup Researcher)

STEALTH NO MORE

Traysar raised a $25M seed round to build autonomous systems for one of the least contested and most strategically overlooked domains in defense: underground. The round was led by Silent Ventures, with participation from Lux Capital, Ora Global, NeverLift VC, Mana, Impatient Ventures, New Vista, Entrée Capital, and angels including Steve Blank and founders from Anduril and Erebor. The company is developing autonomous underground systems designed for navigation and operation in environments where GPS doesn't reach, comms don't propagate, and conventional autonomy stacks fall apart. The engineering team includes former SpaceX and Boring Company engineers — a combination that maps directly onto the problem: rockets teach you autonomy and hardware that survives extreme conditions, and tunneling teaches you how to operate underground at scale. (source: Startup Rise USA)

Aseon Labs raised $10M in seed funding to build the servicing infrastructure that keeps robotaxi fleets running. The problem is a hidden drag on fleet economics: robotaxis spend a surprising amount of time driving without passengers, deadheading to distant depots to be cleaned, inspected, or charged. Those empty miles reduce utilization and make profitability harder to reach. Founders George Kalligeros and Dan Keene are building automated servicing pods deployable throughout a city — parking-space-sized units that inspect vehicles, clean interiors, charge batteries, and retrieve lost items, letting robotaxis get back on the road without long trips to centralized depots. The founders previously built battery-swapping company Pushme, which grew to more than 5,000 locations across 40 markets before being acquired by Tier Mobility. They're betting the same distributed-network playbook applies to autonomous vehicle servicing. The funding will build the first five prototypes, grow the robotics team, and begin deploying the distributed network. (source: LinkedIn, Y Combinator, and TechCrunch)

Arcturus emerged from stealth with an $8M seed round led by Initialized Capital, with participation from 1517 Fund, Toyota Ventures, Breakthrough Energy, Wireframe Ventures, and Climate Capital. Founder Amir Mashal started the company around a problem he couldn't shake: the modern world is asking more and more from copper and aluminum — metals that were never designed for the systems being built on top of them today. Arcturus is building a new class of conductor materials by infusing carbon nanomaterials into metals. The goal is to help wires, motors, and thermal systems move more power, shed more heat, and hold up in harsher conditions, without forcing a redesign of everything around them. According to TechCrunch, the nano-infused copper could halve the grid's electrical losses. EVs, drones, robotics, AI data centers, and the grid itself all depend on copper and aluminum doing their job quietly in the background, and as power, heat, and performance demands rise, those materials are becoming a genuine bottleneck. Why this matters: This is a foundational materials play underneath nearly every hard tech trend in this series. The power buildout for AI, the electrification of everything, the drone and robotics surge — all of it runs on conductors that are hitting their physical limits. A drop-in conductor material that moves more power and sheds more heat without requiring system redesigns would ripple across the entire physical economy. Halving grid electrical losses alone is an enormous prize given how much new generation is being built to feed AI. The investor mix — Breakthrough Energy and Toyota Ventures alongside Initialized and 1517 — reflects both the climate and industrial-scale relevance. Materials science is slow and capital-intensive, but if the performance claims hold up in production, the addressable surface is vast. (source: LinkedIn and TechCrunch)

REAL ESTATE CORNER

El Segundo vs Torrance for hard tech.

I have thoughts.

This is the second entry in my "El Segundo Versus" series.

My job is to help clients find the right space at the right time in their growth cycle.

This one-sheet should help you get started.

Based on recent deals in both markets, here's what I'm seeing.

Questions welcome in the comments or DMs.

-Erik

PARTNER WITH SPACE DIRT🚀

Get your product or service in front of a community of 3,500 hard tech executives, entrepreneurs, and investors.

If you’re interested in partnering with Space Dirt, email us here to see if we’re a good fit.

NOTABLE FUNDINGS

Elroy Air announced plans to go public later this year through a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) led by Inflection Point Asset Management. The merger includes over $165M in committed Private Investment in Public Equity (PIPE) capital and values Elroy at $800M pre-money, giving the company an expected $1B valuation when it’s listed on the Nasdaq. Elroy Air was founded in 2016 and raised a $40M Series A in 2021 from Lockheed Martin Ventures, Marlinspike, and DiamondStream Partners. Inflection Point, Elroy’s partner in this move, is an old hand in the aerospace & defense SPAC world. They’ve taken aviation autonomy startup Merlin Labs, USA Rare Earth, and space companies Intuitive Machines and Quantum Space public in the past few years. (source: Tectonic)

Standard Nuclear, an Oak Ridge, TN-based manufacturer of advanced reactor fuel, filed for an IPO to capitalize on surging power demands from the AI boom. The company aims to scale its domestic production of TRISO fuel for next-generation nuclear reactors. The S-1 filing with the SEC reported a net loss of $7.71M on $593,802 in revenue for the quarter ending March 31, 2026. The company operates the only privately funded, industrial-scale TRISO production line in the U.S. and currently lists a $245M contract backlog with a pipeline of up to $416M in prospective orders. (source: Bloomberg)

Castelion is aiming for a $12B valuation, just months after raising money at $2.8B. The SpaceX alumni–founded missile startup is riding a surge of investor interest in defense tech. (source: The Information)

Principal Mineral announced approximately $280M of new funding to support its next phase of strategic, long-term growth. The funding was co-led by Overmatch Ventures and The New Industrial Corporation, with participation from J2 Ventures, Ensemble VC, and other existing and new investors, alongside a credit facility provided by Lane42 Investment Partners. The capital raise will support integration of the combined company, expansion of advanced manufacturing capacity, continued technology development, and long-term investment in critical supply-chain capabilities across North America, Europe, and Asia. (source: PR Newswire)

Dominion Dynamics raised $100M and plans to use the money to mature its command-and-control suite, AuraNet, as well as its robo-wingman, Scout. The round was led by Georgian. Other backers include Valor Equity Partners, Lakestar, JDY Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Silent Ventures. Dominion has raised $119M since launching last year. CEO Eliot Pence is billing the Series A as the largest "in the history of Canadian defense.” (source: Yahoo! Finance)

Japanese space transportation startup ElevationSpace secured $40M in Series B funding. This round—backed by SPARX Asset Management, Beyond Next Ventures, and others—brings the company's total funding to $63.5M to accelerate its Space-to-Earth environment utilization and payload recovery platforms. (source:  SpaceNews)

Powerus, a Florida-based drone company, announced that it’s secured a $30M strategic investment from drone components-maker Unusual Machines, “[strengthening] a working relationship already in place between the two companies.” (source: Tectonic)

Green energy infrastructure startup TAR raised a $27M seed round to build modular, behind-the-meter power systems for data centers, aiming to solve grid constraints with fast-deployable infrastructure that combines solar, wind, batteries, and limited backup gas generation. Co-founder Pat Becker said the company focuses on speed and independence from the grid, positioning its plug-and-play energy model as a way to power AI-driven data center demand without relying on traditional interconnection timelines or straining local utilities. (source: LinkedIn)

Dawn Aerospace today announced the close of its Series B funding round, raising $25 million at a $195 million post-money valuation. The round was led by US-based VC, Balerion Space Ventures. The Series B was backed by a global syndicate of investors. Participants include Mana Ventures (US), ANA Future Frontier Fund (general partner: Global Brain Corporation) (JP), Green Eight Capital (US), Seven Peak Ventures (US), NZVC (NZ), Alpha Funds (US), Gaingels (US), Crosscourt (US), and individual investors including Tim Ferriss, Michael Hohenester, Markus Hildinger, and Yishan Wong, as well as existing investors Icehouse Ventures, Aera Climate and Frontier Fund, GD1, and Shasta Ventures.(source: Dawn Aerospace)

Doroni Aerospace crossed $30M in total capital raised. This brings them to $17M in capital raised since the unveiling of the H1-X in late March. (source: LinkedIn)

1001 AI announced it has raised a $30M Series A led by Lux Capital, with participation from existing investors General Catalyst, CIV, Chris Re. We’re also thrilled to welcome our newest partners Sanabil Investments, Hanabi, 9Yards, alongside angel investors: Karim Atiyeh, Kareem Amin, Russell Kaplan, Shayan Shafii, Daniel Garber, and Junaid Hussain. (source: LinkedIn)

Foundation Alloy announced $22M in Series A financing to scale production on its MetalsFIRST™ platform—a fully integrated, solid-state metallurgy technology—to industrial volumes. The round was led by Voyager Ventures, with participation from Trust Ventures, Yamaha Motor Ventures, America’s Frontier Fund, Overlap Holdings, Material Impact, Engine Ventures, and El Cap. An additional investment was made by Kanematsu Corporation, a global Japanese trading house, which signed a definitive distribution partnership and is bringing Foundation Alloy’s materials to major industrial customers across Japan and Southeast Asia. Foundation Alloy products, all manufactured in the United States, are being piloted by customers today across North America, Europe and Japan. (source: Foundation Alloy)

Critical Energy raised $19M in seed funding. The seed rounds were led by Susa Ventures and Upfront Ventures, with participation from MaC Venture Capital, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Humba Ventures, Scribble Ventures, and Underground Ventures. The startup also nabbed $3 million in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank, bringing its total early capital to $22 million. (source: TechCrunch)

Katalyst Space raised $12M in a Series A funding round led by Geodesic Capital, with participation from Fortitude Ventures. The capital is primarily dedicated to developing its next-generation robotic spacecraft, Nexus, designed to expand on-orbit satellite servicing and life extension into geostationary orbit (GEO). (source: SpaceNews)

Ubotica Technologies, the Irish space technology firm pioneering Orbital AI, has announced an $11M funding round to accelerate deployment of its AI-powered intelligence platform, a breakthrough maritime security service powered by real-time decision-making satellites in the Earth’s orbit. The round was led by Act Venture Capital and Greencode Ventures, with participation from existing investor Atlantic Bridge. (source: Ubotica)

Askari announced that they’ve raised $9M in seed funding to ramp up production and deliver on a growing order book that has quickly surpassed $2M. Builders VC led the round, with participation from Sovereign’s Capital, Swell VC, Rule 1 Ventures, WaterStone Impact Fund, and a team of defense CEOs, including Umbra’s Gabe Dominocielo, Firestorm’s Dan Magy, Aeon’s Naweed Tahmas, and others. The oversubscribed round brings the startup’s total funding to around $11M. (source: Tectonic)

Sophia Space announced the finalization of a $7M SAFE financing round, bringing the company's total funding to $22M to date. The round includes participation from EverGreen - The NVIDIA Alumni Investment Network - Evergreen, SparkLabs Group, and other strategic investors who share Sophia Space's vision of accelerating the convergence of artificial intelligence and space technologies. The new capital will be used to expand product development, grow engineering and commercial teams, accelerate strategic partnerships, and support deployment of Sophia Space's technology platform across government, commercial, and international markets. (source: Sophia Space)

HighGround announced $6.5M in seed funding, led by Next Frontier Capital with participation from Tandem Ventures, Fulcrum Capital, and Context Ventures, to bring institutional-grade intelligence to the defense and aerospace investment market. (source: HighGround)

Longshot, the defense and space technology company pioneering ground-based kinetic launch systems, today announced a new $5M investment from South Park Commons, bringing the company's total funding to $ 20M. The investment reflects increasing conviction in Longshot's technical progress and long-term vision to dramatically reduce the cost of reaching hypersonic speeds and, ultimately, space. (source: Globe Newswire)

Juno Propulsion announced a $1.4M pre-seed investment round today to fund the completion of its first flight-ready rotating detonation engine (RDE)—called Project Iris—ahead of its inaugural demo mission in 2027. SOSV led the round, which included participation from Hypernova, Leslie Ventures, Activate, Collab Fund, Safar Partners, and Cape Fear Ventures. Juno plans to use the funds to complete development of its Iris engine. Iris is scheduled to fly as a hosted payload onboard a Momentus satellite bus in Q1 2027, where the engine is expected to be the first commercial RDE system to propel a satellite in orbit. (source: Payload) 

AGREEMENTS, PARTNERSHIPS, & CONTRACTS

Rocket Lab and Iridium Communications announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Rocket Lab will acquire Iridium. Rocket Lab will acquire all the outstanding shares of Iridium common stock for $54 per share in a cash and stock transaction. This represents an enterprise value for Iridium of approximately $8.0B. The acquisition merges Rocket Lab's leading launch capabilities and satellite manufacturing with Iridium's global satellite communications network, spectrum, and 500-plus strong partner ecosystem to create a competitive, vertically-integrated space company that designs, builds, launches, and operates its own constellations, delivering critical communications capability to millions of users worldwide. (source: Globe Newswire)

Elon Musk has secured regulatory clearance from the FTC to acquire Mesh Optical Technologies, an AI-focused data center infrastructure startup founded by former SpaceX engineers. According to official early termination notices published by the FTC, the transaction—listed under transaction number 20261601 with Musk designated as the acquiring party—was granted regulatory approval on June 25, 2026. The approval allows Musk to advance his aggressive push into hardware infrastructure and mergers and acquisitions. Mesh Optical Technologies is an independent startup that designs advanced optical transceivers specifically engineered for artificial intelligence data centers. The company closed a $50M Series A funding round in February 2026 to scale its high-speed data architecture. The acquisition provides SpaceX with key technical benefits as the newly public aerospace giant expands its next-generation constellation networks. The optical technology perfected by Mesh integrates with SpaceX's ambitions to deploy orbital AI compute clusters. (source: Yahoo! Finance)

Shield AI, the defense technology company building AI pilots and next-generation aircraft, announced the completion of its acquisition of Aechelon Technology, a leader in high-fidelity simulation, physics-based sensor modeling, and synthetic reality technologies. The transaction follows the successful close of Shield AI’s $2B strategic financing package, which includes $1.5B in Series G funding and $500M in preferred equity financing, valuing the company at $12.7B post-money. The acquisition brings Aechelon’s visual simulation and synthetic environment technologies into Shield AI’s product line, enabling deeper integration between Aechelon’s advanced simulation capabilities and Shield AI’s Hivemind AI pilot. (source: Shield AI)

Dallas-based Principal Mineral acquired Isola Group, a Cerberus Capital Management-backed manufacturer of components for printed circuit boards (PCBs). The undisclosed-price acquisition helps build a localized U.S. PCB supply chain. Principal Mineral will employ roughly 1,300 people across 10 facilities worldwide, spanning manufacturing, R&D, technical support, and sales operations. Adam Johnson will serve as CEO of the combined company, and Principal Mineral's existing leadership team will manage the business. Sean Mirshafiei, President of Isola, will lead day-to-day operations at Isola, reporting to Johnson. Travis Kelly, Chief Executive Officer of Isola, will transition to an advisory role. (source: Bloomberg)

Firefly Aerospace announced the acquisition of Space-ng, a leader in AI-powered vision navigation and autonomous guidance systems. The acquisition brings proven spacecraft software and camera hardware for Firefly’s Blue Ghost landers and Elytra orbital vehicles, bolstering Firefly’s capabilities to advance the future of autonomous space operations for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Along with the Space-ng team, the company’s co-founder and CEO, Ethan Rublee, is joining Firefly as the Chief Engineer of Software and will oversee Firefly’s spacecraft software suite. Space-ng will be fully integrated into Firefly. (source: Firefly)

Code Metal announced that they’ve acquired Signal Processing Technologies (SPT), a move that takes the three-year-old startup from simply translating high-level code and algorithms onto hardware systems into actually developing the algorithms themselves, starting with the signal processing space. Code Metal couldn’t disclose the terms of the deal. (source: Tectonic)

Beehive Industries, an American manufacturer of advanced propulsion systems for uncrewed aerial defense applications, announced it has acquired the assets of two machine shops, Able Tool Corporation and its subsidiary, Planet Products Corporation, located in the Greater Cincinnati area. The acquisition also establishes dedicated Centers of Excellence in Ohio and Tennessee, creating specialized hubs for high-volume machining and additive production. (source: Beehive Industries)

Biosphere, a U.S.-based leader in biomanufacturing technology, announced the acquisition of NovoNutrients, a pioneer in gas fermentation, reactor design, and industrial bioprocess development. Biosphere's UV sterilization platform replaces conventional steam-based sterilization, expanding the design space for high-performance bioreactors. The NovoNutrients acquisition accelerates the application of their platform to intensified reactor designs, giving Biosphere a strong foundation in gas fermentation and high-intensity aerobic fermentation for a wide range of defense, industrial, and commercial applications. (source: GlobeNewswire)

The Marine Corps awarded Seattle's Overland AI a roughly $20M Other Transaction production agreement for autonomous ground vehicles to resupply the MADIS counter-drone system. The company calls it the first production prime for ground autonomy. (source: GovConFeed)

Sophia Space announced it has selected Apex, the leading supplier of productized satellite platforms, to supply a satellite bus to bring real-time orbital computing to enterprise, government, and defense customers. Sophia Space will fly one of Apex’s Nova bus platforms for a demo mission in 2027, demonstrating Sophia Space’s TILE (Thermal Integrated LEO Edge) compute modules. (source: Sophia Space)

Mach Industries won a Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) contract to develop Atlas, a next-generation, runway-independent unmanned aircraft designed for the Navy's Runway Independent Maritime & Expeditionary Strike (RIMES) program. The Atlas aircraft is capable of carrying a 1,000-pound payload over a range of 1,400 nautical miles. (source: Mach Industries)

Rune Technologies announced a five-year, $99M Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with the U.S. Army. The contract establishes an enterprise acquisition vehicle that enables U.S. Army organizations, other Department of War components, and joint force partners, to rapidly procure Rune's TyrOS platform and associated services through streamlined task orders. The contract creates a centralized pathway for Department of War organizations to acquire modern commercial software capabilities that improve operational readiness, logistics, autonomy, command and control, resource visibility, and decision-making across contested and distributed environments. (source: BusinessWire)

The US Army announced that it’s selected Anduril to lead the common data baseline for its NGC2 program—the first major contract awarded to move the effort from prototype to deployment across Army formations. Under the contract, Anduril will work with Palantir to provide an edge-to-cloud data mesh through the company’s Lattice software and Palantir’s Foundry, and with Raft for data registries, transformation tools, and federation. No dollar figure was given, but it falls under Anduril’s $20B, 10-year enterprise agreement with the Army. (source: Tectonic)

The Air Force selected Anduril for the production phase of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. Under the contract, Anduril will deliver an initial set of production FQ-44 semi-autonomous fighter aircraft to support continued testing, validation, and, ultimately, operational fielding. The contract also establishes a structure for the Air Force to buy additional lots of production FQ-44 aircraft across the next several years, providing a clear path for the Air Force to rapidly and affordably expand fighter capacity. The decision is an important waypoint in the history of military aviation writ-large: FQ-44 is the first semi-autonomous fighter aircraft to move into serial production. (source: X)

WHAT I’M CONSUMING (AND ENJOYING!) 

According to PitchBook, Q1 was a record for Robotics and Physical AI by both deal value and deal count, with ~$16B invested across just under 500 deals. For context, the rush of robotics investment is ~2x larger by count and ~4.5x larger by value than the preceding stretch from ‘21-’25. The point being that the rotation to atoms (in the private markets, at least) isn’t just about the chips and inference that will ultimately power the next generation of software—hardware, as a product in its own right, is on the rise. (source: A16Z)

Cantos partner Grant Gregory shares the thoughts behind the Cantos rebrand. Check out their new website and logo: Cantos.

Pax Ventures Founder Michell Volz teaches us all about nuclear reactors and updates on how America is making progress with them in her Substack.

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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