Valar's $1B nuclear ⚛️, Northrop's $3B motors 🚀, Horizon3 hits $2B 🛡️

Valar Atomics raises $1B led by Sequoia at a $6B valuation

California nuclear startup Valar Atomics raised $1 billion led by Sequoia's Shaun Maguire at a $6 billion valuation, plus a $200M credit line from Erebor. Valar builds small modular reactors and recently powered an Nvidia Blackwell system with its Ward 250 unit under a deal for a waterless 30MW AI factory. Defense-relevant nuclear is drawing megaround capital as the Pentagon and hyperscalers both chase firm, onshore power.

Horizon3 raises $250M Series E at a $2B valuation

San Francisco cybersecurity startup Horizon3 raised a $250M Series E co-led by NightDragon and NEA, tripling its valuation to $2 billion in 14 months. Its NodeZero platform runs autonomous, continuous penetration tests on live networks, and new backers include defense contractor SAIC, Qualcomm, and Singapore's EDBI. Founded by two ex-Joint Special Operations Command operators, Horizon3 shows how dual-use AI security pulls defense and enterprise capital into one round.

Orbital Sentry raises pre-seed for GEO missile-warning satellites

Washington DC startup Orbital Sentry closed a pre-seed round led by Ridgeline, with Superorganism and Hustle Fund participating, to build persistent infrared imaging satellites in geostationary orbit. The company, run by CEO Mark Keremedjiev, targets real-time missile-launch detection, battlespace awareness, and wildfire monitoring from GEO — the sensing layer Golden Dome depends on. Seed capital flowing to GEO missile warning shows investors betting the homeland-defense architecture buys from new entrants, not just primes.

Pentagon signs $3B Northrop framework deals for Patriot and THAAD

The Department of War signed two seven-year framework agreements with Northrop Grumman worth $3 billion — $2B for Patriot solid rocket motors and $1B for THAAD structural components. The deals make Northrop a second source for Patriot motors, the tightest bottleneck in a push to triple PAC-3 and quadruple THAAD interceptor output. CSIS's Tom Karako cautioned these are "agreements to agree" until appropriations land, a caveat worth pricing into any supplier revenue model.

American Rheinmetall wins Army deal for autonomous supply vehicles

American Rheinmetall won an 18-month US Army contract under Project Sustainment to develop hybrid-powered autonomous vehicles that haul supplies to forward troops. Run through the National Advanced Mobility Consortium, the effort pairs Harbinger's hybrid chassis, Forterra's self-driving stack, and Primordial Labs' voice-control interface. Subsystem slots on a prime's logistics vehicle are becoming the fastest procurement path for venture-backed autonomy startups.

Pentagon expands its counter-drone marketplace and ties it to arms sales

Joint Interagency Task Force 401 expanded its counter-drone marketplace at cuas.mil, letting units search validated performance data and buy vetted C-UAS products directly. Built with Kaizen Laboratories, the platform now ties into the Army's FMS Fast Lane, pre-clearing listed products for foreign military sales. Validated-vendor status becomes a real moat for counter-drone startups, and the FMS hook turns a US listing into allied revenue.

Raytheon installs the first SPY-6(V)4 array at Wallops Island

Raytheon installed the first SPY-6(V)4 radar array at the Navy's Wallops Island test site, ahead of backfitting USS Pinckney and other Flight IIA destroyers. Testing runs through mid-2028; SPY-6 is already on two commissioned ships, installed on 11 more, and planned for over 50 across the next decade. Raytheon has put $800M into radar manufacturing and expects to double SPY-6 output by 2028, a reminder that naval sensing is won on factory capacity.

Korean Air and Archer partner on a military eVTOL for Korea

Korean Air and US eVTOL maker Archer Aviation will adapt Archer's Midnight aircraft, already tested by the US Air Force, for Korean military medevac and search-and-rescue missions. Korea's arms agency is weighing whether to fold the effort into a fast-track pilot program, using Archer's FAA certification data to build a domestic advanced-air-mobility base. The deal turns a commercial air-taxi design into an allied defense platform, a template for exporting US eVTOL tech into partner militaries.

Largest-ever forced-labor entity list expansion hits defense materials

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list took its largest-ever expansion into effect August 3, adding 43 Chinese companies and pushing the list from 144 to 187. Twenty-three of the additions produce raw materials — aluminum, titanium, graphite, lithium, silicon — and 19 sit outside Xinjiang, extending seizure risk deep into ordinary supply chains. With no de minimis threshold and defense waivers for Chinese critical minerals ending January 2027, hardware portfolios need upstream documentation now.

Base Power raised a $1B Series D at a $13B valuation to mass-produce US-built home batteries for grid resilience. Foundational Industries raised $25M seed from BoxGroup and Zigg to run AI-operated factories building data-center hardware. Zenity raised a $125M Series C led by Norwest to secure enterprise AI agents across Copilot, Gemini, and Bedrock. US weapons makers face fresh pressure to drop China's rare-earth magnets before DFARS bans them in January 2027.