AtomsNotBits

Daily Hard Tech Headlines: - BVVC has launched UNION. The new startup will develop American energetics. - Tekever has raised €70M. The Portuguese startup develops UAS and will use the capital to expand in the American market. The round was led by the NATO Innovation Fund. - Anduril Industries has completed a static firing of its Anduril Denali? 18-inch hypersonic booster (seen below). - Blue Origin's New Shepard successfully completed its NS-28 suborbital flight, carrying six passengers. - Colin Chisholm has joined Forterra as the COO. Colin is a Marine veteran and has led process automation and product operations at multiple firms. - VideoRay: underwater robots has been acquired by BlueHalo. Video Ray is a Pennsylvania-based ROV producer.

Daily Hard Tech Headlines: - Anduril Industries Counter Unmanned Aerial System (CUAS) Engagement System has been awarded a $200M contract by the United States Marine Corps - Jeremy Barenholtz (former VP of Product and Technology at Neuralink) has joined Nudge as a co-founder. Nudge is developing ultrasound headsets for brain health. - Figure 02 humanoids are now running 400% faster with a 7x improvement in success rate (operating autonomously). - AeroVironment has acquired BlueHalo for over $4B (all-stock transaction). Blue Halo develops C-UAS, unmanned and autonomous systems, cyber technology, space technology, and more. - Red Cat Holdings's Teal system (sUAS) has been selected by the US Army as the program of record for the U.S. Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance.

Daily Hard Tech Headlines: - The Hypersonic Flight Test and Experimentation project has been announced under AUKUS. The testing partnership will include multiple trilateral flight test campaigns. -?Jon McNeill ?and DVx Ventures have raised a $100M fund for their venture studio. DVx Ventures has built hard tech startups such as?Interstellar Lab, which is developing biofarming solutions for Earth and space. - The Exploration Company, a Berlin-based developer of cargo spacecraft, has raised a $160M Series B. -?U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded?Radiant $5M for the "Second Phase of Advanced Reactor Experiment Designs."

Daily Hard Tech Headlines: - The Oregon UAS Accelerator is accepting applications for their next cohort. Startups will receive a $40K grant, flight testing support, access to the Pendleton UAS Range, workshop space, and more. - United States Space Force has chosen Optimum Technologies for the development of an optical imaging payload. The contract amount is $4.5M. - A private 5G network has been deployed at a mine in Canada. The deployment occurred at a NORCAT mine. - Borg Robotics has announced their upcoming autonomous industrial product lineup. The soon-to-be-revealed lineup is built in Detroit, a city known for its industrial might in sectors such as automotive. They are targeting various industrial markets.

Daily Hard Tech Headlines: - University of Waterloo has opened an innovation arena with 20,000 square feet of space for hardware development, including wet labs and a clinical trial suite. The arena also hosts the university's startup incubator. - University of Notre Dame has partnered with the Pentagon to open a Mach 10 wind tunnel for hypersonic research - Hermeus has integrated Starlink into their Quarterhorse Mk 1 aircraft, which will be used for "beyond visual line-of-sight command and control."

Daily Hard Tech Headlines: - Radiant has raised a $100M Series C. Radiant is developing microreactors to service rural areas and military bases, disrupting the diesel generator space. The round was led by DCVC with participation from various investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Chevron Technology Ventures, Boost VC, and more. - Akash Systems has received $68M in funding from the CHIPS Act. The funding will be used to scale up their "Diamond Cooled servers & GaN-on-Diamond Space Radios." - General Galactic has raised an $8M seed round led by Harpoon Ventures & Refactor. General Galactic is turning CO? into fossil-free fuel. - The Good Drone Company has launched; the UAS startup is serving end markets such as logistics, high-cost-of-downtime industries, and emerging markets. - Anduril Industries autonomous surveillance towers have been installed by the U.S. Border Patrol in the Big Bend Sector. These two new towers bring the count to over 300 installations. - Impulse Space has announced a new hydrocarbon engine with 15K pounds of thrust, making it one of the "highest-performing liquid oxygen/liquid methane engines ever flown."

Daily hard tech headlines: -?CHAOS Industries has raised a $145M Series B. The funding will be used for further development of their radar technology and more. - The U.S., Canada, and Finland are partnering to develop Arctic and polar icebreakers. The three countries have signed an MOU. - GITAI has raised $15.5M to develop robotic systems for space applications. - Vatn Systems has raised $13M in a round led by DYNE Ventures. The startup develops autonomous underwater vehicles. - Leonid Capital Partners has provided a $10M debt investment to Ion Storage Systems. The company is developing solid-state lithium metal batteries for end markets such as defense, EVs, grid storage, and consumer electronics. - Dreamstar Lines, the overnight sleeper train operator connecting LA to SF, has announced that Designworks, A BMW Group Company, the design innovation group under BMW Group, has been selected to create the interior and exterior of their passenger rail cars. -?Lunar Outpost has raised Series A funding to develop mobility vehicles for the moon.

Daily Hard Tech Headlines: - Firefly Aerospace has raised a $175M Series D led by RPM Ventures. The Cedar Park, Texas company will use the capital to ramp up vehicle and spacecraft production. - Blake Lieberman has launched 021, a hard tech venture firm that plans to invest $1M SAFE in 5 hardware founders, allowing them to build on a 500+ acre ranch outside of Austin, Texas. - The U.S. Army has awarded a contract to REPKON USA-Defense. REPKON will produce American TNT at a Kentucky-based facility, marking a significant shift from America’s prior overseas procurement. - France is purchasing autonomous underwater drones for minehunting operations from Exail and sonar capabilities from Thales. - Y Combinator has launched new requests for startups in various hard tech industries, including manufacturing, space tech, and public safety technology.

Saving seagrass, disrupting the power line business, and autonomous drones the size of trucks. Read more in our weekly newsletter here:

Daily Hard Tech Headlines: - The US Army is organizing a series of events to determine the concept of employment for electronic warfare. - Matter Intelligence has raised a $12M seed round. The remote sensing startup utilizes hyperspectral imaging to deliver next-generation mapping via space sensors, targeting end markets such as defense, insurance, energy, and agriculture. - Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering Inc., developing autonomous underwater drones focused on seagrass restoration, has raised a $2M pre-seed round led by Lowercarbon Capital and Ryan Orbuch. - Flyby Robotics has announced the Drone Hacker Prize, offering a $1K prize and an opportunity to work with their team in LA. - Palantir Technologies has partnered with Anthropic to provide defense customers access to Claude on AWS. - A team of biologists, roboticists, and paleontologists is building robots to study the evolution of fish into land animals.