Hadrian raises $1.37bn to accelerate automated US factories

Defence tech company Hadrian has raised $1.37bn in Series D funding to expand its network of highly automated US factories. The company is betting that software, robotics and skilled workers will help close persistent production gaps in defence and aerospace supply chains. This latest funding round values the company at $7.87bn.

The financing round was co-led by WCM Investment Management, Washington Harbour Partners, Valor Equity Partners, 137 Ventures and Baillie Gifford. JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group came in as an anchor co-lead through its Security and Resiliency Initiative, while a raft of investors including CapitalG, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Apollo and T. Rowe Price also participated.

Rather than develop another AI-enabled weapons platform, Hadrian’s strategy is building factories designed to manufacture precision components and eventually complete systems for existing aerospace and defence programmes. That is a much less glamorous layer of defence technology, perhaps, but one where bottlenecks have become painfully visible.

The problem is production.

Targeting industrial capacity

According to the company, the new capital will fund additional factories, research and development, and production capabilities for mission-critical systems. Its “Factories-as-a-Service” model is intended to rapidly add capacity for priority areas such as munitions and shipbuilding.

Hadrian now operates four sites across nearly 3m square feet: two facilities in Torrance, California, alongside new factories in Mesa, Arizona, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Further sites and new lines for munitions and autonomous systems are planned over the next year.

That expansion reflects an important shift in industrial AI. While initiatives such as Siemens and IFS’ work on the industrial AI loop focus on linking operational data and engineering processes, Hadrian is applying the technology directly to factory throughput, routing and production execution.

A defence manufacturing bet

Hadrian uses its proprietary Opus software alongside automation and robotics to augment human workers in aerospace and defence manufacturing. It counts Lockheed Martin, RTX and Anduril among its customers. The US Navy also selected the company in March to mass-produce components in Alabama for Virginia-class attack and Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines.

The raise follows a $260m Series C roughly a year ago, taking Hadrian’s total funding to about $2bn.

The premise is straightforward: deterrence depends not only on designs or stockpiles, but on the ability to produce at speed. As agentic manufacturing gains traction, Hadrian’s funding round shows investors increasingly see automated factory capacity as strategic infrastructure rather than a back-office efficiency project.

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