Riding a wave of enthusiasm for defense tech, manufacturing startup Hadrian on Thursday closed its latest round of funding at a nearly $8 billion valuation, more than quadruple where investors valued the company in January.
The round was led by Baillie Gifford, J.P. Morgan Strategic Investment Group, and a number of others, including Washington Harbor Partners.
"It enables us to make massive investments to scale our workforce, our software platform Opus that powers our factories, and frankly, get ahead of the massive amounts of production challenges the country has in areas like submarines, munitions, the drone industrial base," CEO Chris Power told CNBC's Morgan Brennan on "Morning Call" on Thursday.
Hadrian builds advanced factories for defense and aerospace companies and agencies. Power said the company's Opus software is being used by the Army and Navy, and the company will be announcing other defense primes soon.
"With physical AI sweeping the physical economy, which is 100 times larger than the digital economy, everyone's going to need to rebase their software to adapt and compete in this new world," Power told CNBC.
