Blackbeard Extension

Happy Thursday.

The build this week: Castelion raised $1 billion to expand Blackbeard production at its 1,000-acre Project Ranger campus in Sandoval County, New Mexico.

Underneath: 3,000 AI-hardware jobs head to Nevada, the Army gives Raft a $99 million enterprise path, a mobile-howitzer line takes shape in Alabama, and eight industrial deals clear new capital gates.

The Lead

Castelion raised $1 billion in a Series C to push its Blackbeard hypersonic missile toward maximum production and add longer-range strike and defensive systems. The package includes $800 million in equity and $250 million of committed revolving-credit capacity, valuing the four-year-old defense company at $13 billion.

Blackbeard has already crossed the line from development program to production program. Castelion says it secured more than $500 million in U.S. military contracts over the past 18 months, moved the weapon from a clean sheet to program-of-record status in under four years and is targeting fielding in 2027.

The money now runs into Sandoval County. Castelion's Project Ranger campus covers 1,000 acres near Rio Rancho and is built for solid rocket motor manufacturing, static testing and final assembly. The original plan called for more than $220 million of private investment, 300-plus permanent jobs and 21 buildings ready for production by the end of 2026. Castelion now says it will commit hundreds of millions more to expand Blackbeard capacity at and beyond the site.

That gives New Mexico a full production role inside a defense program. Engineering, propellant work, testing, assembly and supplier demand can accumulate around the same campus, supported by the state's laboratories, technical workforce and long history in aerospace and national-security research. The company and state estimate roughly $650 million of economic impact over the next decade.

Defense & Space

• Raft won a five-year, $99 million Army IDIQ that gives military organizations a repeat path to procure its data platforms, secure compute, integrations and support.

• Hanwha Defense USA will deliver six K9 Mobile Howitzer prototypes, with an option for 12 more and a new integration and test site taking shape in Opelika, Alabama.

• Trident Solutions and SciTec formed a flight-hardware and mission-software partnership around a joint edge-processing testbed for missile warning and space-domain missions.

Semiconductors & Electronics

• LG Display introduced FLiPP, an FMM-less OLED patterning process that delivered 1.6 times the brightness, 2.4 times the lifespan and 13% lower power in equal-condition testing.

• Relativity Networks raised $22 million and secured a $40 million hyperscaler order for hollow-core fiber designed to move data 50% faster across large AI campuses.

• YFORE opened an Atlanta headquarters and production facility that puts automotive-electronics R&D, advanced manufacturing, regional sourcing and customer engineering under one roof.

Manufacturing & Automation

• Hyve Solutions selected Reno and North Las Vegas for two advanced-manufacturing campuses, including a 624,000-square-foot Reno flagship and approximately 3,000 planned AI-hardware jobs.

• Kubota assembled its first SVL75-3 loader in Salina after more than $300 million of recent investment turned the Kansas operation into a construction-equipment manufacturing and test hub.

• E Tech Group expanded its SmartSights partnership to resell, integrate and support the full factory-intelligence portfolio across downtime analysis, alarm management and production reporting.

• SandboxAQ made AQCat generally available for high-throughput catalyst screening, giving materials teams a new path from computational search to laboratory candidates.

Energy & Materials

• Energy Fuels qualified Utah-produced terbium oxide with a major Japanese magnet manufacturer, clearing the material for commercial permanent-magnet production without further validation.

• American Tungsten & Antimony was selected to negotiate a potential DOE award of up to $18 million for domestic antimony smelting capacity tied to projects in Utah, Nevada and Arizona.

• DISA Uranium closed its formation and a $105 million private placement, combining permitted Utah mines with recovery technology and new processing capital.

• Ramaco Resources and Indium Corporation signed a nonbinding MOU to explore gallium and germanium supply from Wyoming's Brook Mine into established semiconductor and advanced-materials channels.

Supply Chain & Freight

• Grainger opened a 550,000-square-foot Northwest Distribution Center in Gresham, Oregon, adding approximately 150 jobs and more regional capacity for essential MRO products.

• RTB Holdings launched around Alabama Motor Express and acquired JIT-Ex, pairing more than 500 tractors and 2,000 trailers with expanded brokerage and expedited services.

• Amazon Prime Air plans to reach nearly 500 U.S. cities by year-end after delivering hundreds of thousands of packages by drone in 2026 and naming 11 additional launch locations.

Dealbook

• Lyntris priced 17 million IPO shares at $17.50, creating a $297.5 million public offering for the defense-connectivity company and its selling stockholders.

• Also raised a $150 million Series D to advance multiple autonomous-delivery form factors, bringing the Rivian spinout's disclosed funding to $455 million.

• Relativity Networks raised $22 million in SAFE financing alongside a $40 million follow-on order from an unnamed hyperscaler.

• Veralto agreed to acquire Cleanwater1 for $465 million, adding approximately 25,000 installed water-disinfection and solids-management units.

• Dover agreed to acquire cryogenic-valve maker Leistung, adding an Ahmedabad manufacturing hub with expansion capacity for LNG and industrial-gas equipment.

• TopHat Security closed a Series A led by Landolt Securities to scale its O-RANGE digital-twin platform for critical-infrastructure security, with the amount undisclosed.

• Sentinel Capital Partners closed the sale of Marioff, moving the marine and industrial fire-suppression business out of Spectrum Safety Solutions with terms undisclosed.

• IsoEnergy and DISA Technologies completed DISA Uranium's formation and $105 million financing, with IsoEnergy investing $33 million and retaining roughly 33% ownership.

Back Tuesday.