Daily Hard Tech Headlines:
- @standardbots has secured a $200M Series C led by @RoboStrategy. The Long Island, New York-based company develops American-made industrial robots for customers across the Department of War, defense primes, NASA, and other critical industries. With the new funding, Standard Bots is expanding its production facility to 70,000 square feet.
- Japan is developing a new unmanned amphibious assault vehicle to give its Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade a robotic first-wave capability for remote island defense and recapture operations.
- @Gatik_AI, the autonomous freight operator, secured a deal with PepsiCo to deploy autonomous trucks across North America for food and beverage distribution, making it the largest deployment in history.
- Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is expanding drone delivery to the Bay Area, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Salt Lake City, and Memphis, Tennessee, as part of a broader rollout to reach more than 40 million Americans by 2027.
- NASA and the University of North Dakota are testing a forward-deployable bioreactor system designed to turn astronaut wastewater into reusable water and plant nutrients for future lunar and Martian habitats.
- Picket Defense Systems has been selected by Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to test its C-UAS turret designed to defeat drone swarms.
- @PalladyneAI has secured a partnership with IAI - Israel Aerospace Industries to bring IAI’s combat-proven loitering munition systems into U.S. production, built for enemy air defense suppression and long-range strike missions.
- Gardar has launched an €80M+ fund focused on seed-to-Series B investments in Ukrainian defense tech.
- @HypercraftUSA secured a partnership with Fortem Technologies focused on integrating Fortem’s C-UAS radar and interception platform onto Hypercraft’s unmanned ground vehicle.
- @Raytheon is deploying $100M to expand its Portsmouth, Rhode Island, facility and increase production of its next-generation air and missile defense radars.
- Alta Ares secured €50M to scale AI-enabled air defense systems, developing interceptor drones built to counter drones, cruise missiles, and glide bombs in arctic and desert environments. Air Street Capital led the round, with Cherry Ventures, OTB Ventures, and Harpoon participating.
- Bayou Metal Supply & Manufacturing, LLC has opened a dedicated Louisiana production line to help scale manufacturing of HII ROMULUS unmanned surface vessel.
- Airbus Helicopters has introduced the U145, an autonomous, uncrewed version of the H145 helicopter designed for high-capacity cargo and logistics missions.
