Hadrian Raises $1.37B at a $7.9B Valuation to Build Defense Factories

Defense manufacturing startup Hadrian closed a $1.37 billion Series D at a $7.87 billion valuation, the company announced on August 6. The round was co-led by WCM Investment Management, Washington Harbour Partners, Valor Equity Partners, 137 Ventures, and Baillie Gifford, with JPMorgan Chase's Strategic Investment Group joining as anchor co-lead through its Security and Resiliency Initiative.

Other participants include 1789 Capital, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, Apollo, T. Rowe Price, CapitalG, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Altimeter, Construct Capital, and existing investors. The total raised to date is now roughly $2 billion.

Hadrian does not build weapons. It builds the factories that produce parts for the platforms the military already uses. The company operates four facilities covering just under 3 million square feet: two in Torrance, California, and newer sites in Mesa, Arizona, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The Alabama facility, opened in March, is structured as a public-private partnership valued at $2.4 billion and focuses on Columbia- and Virginia-class submarine components.

CEO Chris Power said the new capital will expand the workforce from 700 to 2,000 over the next year, fund additional factories, and accelerate the Opus software platform that coordinates the company's AI-driven production lines. He also flagged munitions and autonomous systems as the next production lines.

The timing is not accidental. The United States is trying to rebuild domestic industrial capacity at a scale not seen in decades, and Hadrian's pitch is that software-defined manufacturing can move faster than traditional defense primes. Whether that promise holds at scale will determine if the valuation sticks or if this becomes another defense-tech bubble.