Hadrian Raises $1.37B to Build the AI-Powered Factories Behind America's Defense Industrial Base

Hadrian, the advanced manufacturing company building highly automated factories for the U.S. defense and aerospace industry, announced $1.37 billion in new equity financing on Aug. 6, 2026. The Series D round values the company at $7.87 billion and was anchored by JPMorganChase's Strategic Investment Group through the bank's Security and Resiliency Initiative, a program dedicated to strengthening industries critical to national and economic security. Co-leads include WCM Investment Management, Washington Harbour Partners, Valor Equity Partners, 137 Ventures and Baillie Gifford, with participation from Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, funds managed by Apollo, T. Rowe Price, CapitalG, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and Lux Capital.

A machine maker, not a weapons maker

Hadrian does not build AI-powered weapons. It builds the factories and precision-manufacturing capacity that produce components for systems the military already fields, working with primes including Lockheed Martin, RTX and Anduril Industries. In March, the U.S. Navy said Hadrian would mass-produce components in Alabama for its Virginia-class attack and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. The company's proprietary Opus software platform, which orchestrates its factory floors, is already in use with the Army and Navy, according to founder and CEO Chris Power.

From $1.6 billion to $7.87 billion in seven months

The raise comes a little more than a year after Hadrian's $260 million Series C and brings total funding to roughly $2 billion. It also marks a striking re-rating: investors valued the company at $1.6 billion in January, and the new round more than quadruples that mark. The capital will fund new factories, expanded R&D and new production lines — including munitions and autonomous systems. Hadrian currently operates just under 3 million square feet across four sites: two in Torrance, California, plus Mesa, Arizona, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with additional sites in development across the country.

Factories-as-a-Service

Hadrian's "Factories-as-a-Service" model combines process engineering, AI and robotics with a skilled human workforce. The factories are design-agnostic: the same automated lines can be shifted between components for submarines, missiles, drones and other high-priority programs as demand changes. Power describes the company as "far ahead of the pack, in terms of highly automated, design-agnostic factories." The Series D will also expand a workforce model that gives factory-floor technicians and operators equity in the company — an attempt to rebuild the American manufacturing workforce alongside its machines.

Production as deterrence

The round lands amid a broader rush to reindustrialize U.S. defense production. Wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe have shown that the country can expend expensive interceptors and missiles faster than industry can replace them, and the Pentagon is pressing for faster, more resilient supply chains as the Trump administration seeks an unprecedented $1.5 trillion in defense spending. "It was never inventory. It was never a nice design. It's mass," Power told Axios. "Being able to produce — and have advanced factories — is deterrence."

What it means for heavy industry

For the construction, mining and heavy-equipment sectors, Hadrian is a leading indicator of where manufacturing is heading. The same forces transforming its factory floors — software-defined production, robotics, AI-assisted machining and a tighter link between factory capacity and national security priorities — are already reshaping how heavy equipment is designed and built. When the defense industrial base, historically the most conservative of manufacturing customers, bets billions on automated production, the "factory of the future" stops being a concept and becomes a funded, scaling business model.

"Production is now the frontline of deterrence," Power said. If Hadrian's investors are right, that frontline will be built by software, robots and a new generation of American technicians — and the machines this industry covers will increasingly be made in plants that look nothing like the factories of the last century.