CSP Associates

CSP is excited to announce Sean Purdy has joined our firm as an Associate Director. With nearly 20 years of leadership experience, including stints at Oliver Wyman and L.E.K. Consulting, Sean has advised on numerous high-impact projects and more than $5B in total successful strategic acquisitions across aerospace, defense, and other industries. In addition to CSP, Sean serves as a Commanding Officer in the US Navy Reserve, where his roles have kept him engaged at the forefront of defense technology in the maritime, air, space, and cyber domains. Sean holds an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, a Masters in Systems Analysis from the Naval Postgraduate School, and a Bachelor of Science from the United States Naval Academy. In his free time, he enjoys playing rugby and cooking. Welcome, Sean! 🚀

Big congrats to Jacobs on completing the spin-off of its Critical Mission Solutions and Cyber & Intelligence government services businesses. The spin-off and resultant merger with Amentum Parent Holdings LLC formed an independent, publicly traded company, Amentum Holdings, Inc. (“Amentum”), that began trading on NYSE earlier this week. Jacobs now has a more focused business, and Amentum over 53,000 employees in 80 countries, providing full lifecycle, advanced engineering, and tech solutions for space, intel, environment, defense, and civilian markets to the USG and its allied partners. The CSP Associates team, including Ryan Bolton, Michael Jamison, and James Walker, enjoyed working with Jacobs on this transaction.

CSP Associates invites you to join us, alongside Aviation Week Network and Lazard, for our 6th annual Aerospace & Defense Mergers & Acquisitions conference in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, November 12. This intimate event will provide a unique opportunity to address the challenges and opportunities facing investors in the aerospace and defense sectors. Join industry experts and peers for insightful discussions and valuable networking opportunities. To extend our appreciation, click the link below and use code CSP20 for 20% off at registration. https://lnkd.in/ei8cpsRe

Congrats to Josh Araujo, Scott Sanders and the rest of the Forterra team for completing their $75M fundraise. The round was more than 2.5X oversubscribed and co-led by XYZ Venture Capital, Hedosophia, and Moore Strategic Ventures. The round also included participation from Standard Investments, Enlightenment Capital, Four More Capital, and Crescent Cove Advisors LP among others. Over the past year, Forterra has hit a number of company milestones, including the first successful deployment of autonomous driving systems (ADS) on the first production program in the DoD, and is actively delivering capabilities on DoD ground autonomy programs with its Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV), Ground Expeditionary Autonomous Retrofit System (GEARS), and Small Multi-Purpose Equipment Transport (SMET) with operational units. The company has also made significant inroads into the commercial market vis-a-vis their partnership with Kalmar. Looking forward to watching the Forterra team in their next phase of growth. Proud of the CSP Associates team, including Scott McKnight, Michael Jamison, Ryan Bolton, Annan Lu, and Tyler Howington for their work on this engagement.

CSP is proud to announce Scott Goldstein has joined our firm as a Senior Advisor. Dr. Goldstein brings to our firm over 30 years of experience leading organizations, running profit-and-loss centers, serving as Chief Technology Officer, Chief Strategy Officer and furthering the development of technology solutions in virtually all fields of ISR, command & control, electronic warfare, space and cyber. He is currently a Senior Vice President at Parsons and previously was Anduril’s Chief Scientist, SAIC’s Vice President of Engineering, Integration, and Logistics, and ENSCO’s Chief Strategy and Technology Officer. He also has held leadership roles at Dynetics, QinetiQ North America, and ManTech. Dr. Goldstein retired as a major general in the U.S. Air Force where he served as an experienced space operations, cyber operations, and acquisition professional. He served as a senior technology and strategy advisor on topics such as the application of AI, digital & mission engineering to C5ISR, space operations, cyber and JADC2, while holding leadership assignments for the Under Secretary of the Air Force; the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics; US Cyber Command; Air Forces Cyber; the Space and Missile Systems Center; and the Air Force Research Laboratory. He also worked on the Secretary of Defense Staff, the Joint Staff, and within the U.S. intelligence community. Dr. Goldstein is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Washington Academy of Sciences, and a member of the IEEE Radar Systems Panel. He has authored or co-authored well over 100 refereed technical publications and holds four U.S. patents in spread spectrum communications, advanced sensor data compression, ISR, and adaptive processing for signal detection. Dr. Goldstein serves on the Army Science Board as well as the Advisory Boards of Anduril, Information Systems Laboratories, and George Mason’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, among many others.

Congrats to Astrion, a portfolio company of Brightstar Capital Partners, on their recent acquisition of Axient. Axient has continually grown its capability and customer portfolio to span cUAS, hypersonics, space exploration, missile defense, and spacecraft engineering integration work, for agencies including NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, US Army, United States Air Force, and United States Space Force.  The entire CSP Associates team, including Ryan Bolton, Michael Jamison, Annan Lu, and James Walker enjoyed supporting the Brightstar team on this transaction.

Bravo Zulu to Behrman Capital on their agreement to sell kSARIA to ITT Inc. kSARIA completed four add-on acquisitions under Behrman’s ownership, and it’ll be exciting to watch the company’s continued growth with ITT. kSARIA provides mission-critical connectivity solutions that support applications for avionics, sensors, comms, and networking on platforms like the F-35. The CSP Associates team, including Scott McKnight, Michael Jamison, and Stephen Tames, enjoyed working with Behrman on this transaction, a great outcome for all parties involved.

Big congrats to Anduril Industries on recently securing $1.5 billion of new funding for their Series F round, and to Valor Equity Partners on their participation in this latest round. Notably, part of this new round of capital will be used to invest in a new manufacturing platform and a facility ­– Arsensal-1 – capable of producing tens of thousands of autonomous military systems a year for the United States and its allies. It’s hard to believe Anduril was founded in 2017. From the company’s first program of record with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to its recent CCA win with the United States Air Force, the company has almost single-handedly changed the #defensetech narrative and proven out its core thesis: we can buy and build cutting-edge technology at speed and at scale without breaking the bank. The entire CSP Associates team, including Ryan Bolton Michael Jamison, and Annan Lu, enjoyed working with the Valor team on this latest funding round. CSP has had the pleasure of providing transaction diligence support to Valor during their participation in Anduril’s earlier rounds as well. Onward and upward 🚀🚀🚀  

Picking the right strategic partner is important for growth and momentum. Congrats to Ghost Robotics on their just-announced strategic partnership with LIG Nex1. It’ll be exciting to watch how this partnership leads to new Q-UGV applications in the defense and industrial markets.   Proud of our team at CSP Associates, including Marc Vaucher, Ryan Bolton, and Michael Jamison, for their support on this deal. We enjoyed working with the amazing team at Ghost Robotics and our friends at Houlihan Lokey. Congrats to all! 

CSP Associates is pleased to have supported Platinum Equity on their recently announced agreement to acquire Héroux-Devtek. Proud of the CSP team, including Nate Neroni, Kevin Papak, Declan Traianou, and Stephen Tames, for their work on this transaction. We enjoyed working with Delara Zarrabi and the rest of the Platinum team. Congrats!