Ursa Major Is Going Public in a $2.3 Billion SPAC Deal to Scale Rocket Production

Ursa Major Is Going Public in a $2.3 Billion SPAC Deal to Scale Rocket Production

Ursa Major Technologies, the Colorado-based company building rocket engines and hypersonic systems, announced on Tuesday that it will go public through a $2.3 billion merger with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. III. The deal values the company at roughly $1.6 billion before the transaction and could inject at least $350 million into its expansion plans.

The blank-check merger, led by Inflection Point Asset Management, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027. Once it does, the combined company will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker IPXX. For Ursa Major, the timing is not subtle: defense contractors and weapons startups are drawing more capital as geopolitical tensions push demand for faster, cheaper production of drones, missiles, and rocket motors.

From Engines to All-Up Missile Systems

Founded in 2015 in Berthoud, Colorado, Ursa Major started with rocket engines. Its Hadley liquid engine has flown on more than ten successful hypersonic missions, and its Draper engine powered the Air Force Research Laboratory's Affordable Rapid Missile Demonstrator through two flight tests earlier this year. Those flights are now the foundation for Ursa Major's HAVOC Missile System, a complete hypersonic round the company is positioning as a faster alternative to legacy defense suppliers.

The company also builds solid rocket motors. In August it won a $10 million U.S. Navy contract to advance the MK 104 dual-thrust rocket motor through critical design review and static fire testing. Ursa Major says it has conducted more than 5,500 ground tests and logged 140,000 seconds of hot-fire time across its propulsion portfolio.

Why Additive Manufacturing Keeps Popping Up

Ursa Major's pitch to investors leans heavily on scalable, flexible manufacturing. The company runs additive manufacturing operations in Youngstown, Ohio, and has talked openly about using 3D printing to iterate engine designs faster than traditional casting or machining would allow. In a recent interview with VoxelMatters, Director of Additive Manufacturing Tom Pomorski described how AI-assisted workflows and EOS metal printers are being used to produce hypersonic hardware that would otherwise take far longer to qualify.

That manufacturing story matters because the U.S. defense industrial base has spent years warning that it cannot surge production quickly enough for modern conflict. Ursa Major's answer is a factory model that can switch between liquid engines, solid rocket motors, and complete missile systems without the fixed tooling a traditional prime contractor would need.

The Numbers Behind the Deal

The transaction includes at least $350 million in private investment in public equity, or PIPE, commitments, with roughly $110 million funded at signing. Existing investors including XN are participating alongside new institutional investors. Depending on redemptions, Ursa Major could retain up to $345 million in additional proceeds.

Proceeds are earmarked for expanding production capacity, with a major focus on turning Ursa Major's Galeton, Colorado test site into a large-scale solid rocket motor production campus. The company also plans to grow liquid engine manufacturing, additive manufacturing capacity, and all-up-round development.

CEO Chris Spagnoletti put it plainly in the press release: 'Deterrence depends on what can be built reliably, safely and at scale.' After eleven years of private funding, Ursa Major is betting the public markets will give it the capital to prove that claim.

Image credit: Ursa Major / U.S. Army