Canton Turns Up The Heat

Happy Thursday.

The build this week: Metallus and the U.S. Army have commissioned nearly $100 million of new steelmaking assets in Canton, Ohio, for the domestic munitions supply chain.

Underneath: Lam grows Oregon chip R&D, BAE modernizes USS Boxer, SiFly raises $20 million for U.S. drone production, and twelve industrial transactions move capital into physical systems.

The Lead

Metallus and the U.S. Army commissioned a new bloom reheat furnace, roller furnace and supporting equipment at the company's Gambrinus facility in Canton, Ohio. The equipment is backed by the Army's nearly $100 million funding commitment and workforce and economic-development support from JobsOhio.

The assets are installed at a plant that has supplied specialty steel for Army artillery and mortar applications for more than 30 years. Metallus says the new equipment improves operating efficiency, product quality and manufacturing flexibility across that work.

The Army identifies Metallus's HF-1 steel as a raw material used in 155 mm artillery metal parts. The new furnaces give that upstream stage more controllable domestic processing before the steel moves to projectile-part producers.

Canton already has the harder pieces of an industrial base: a century of steelmaking, a qualified workforce, an operating plant and a customer relationship measured in decades. The Army added new capital equipment to that base, while JobsOhio supported the people and regional system needed to run it.

Defense & Space

• LeoLabs won a $20.68 million Space Force prototype agreement to deliver a defense test capability for orbital intelligence.

• SiFly raised a $20 million Series A to expand U.S. production and customer deliveries of its Q12 long-endurance electric aircraft.

Maritime & Shipbuilding

• REGENT raised $240 million in Series B funding, co-led by Mare Liberum and AE Ventures with debt from Erebor Bank, to scale Seaglider manufacturing, certification and customer deliveries from its Rhode Island base.

• BAE Systems won a $149.8 million contract to modernize USS Boxer at Naval Base San Diego, with options that could bring the award to $180 million.

• Hexagon agreed to acquire Guidance Marine, adding about EUR 22 million of annual revenue and vessel-positioning technology to its maritime portfolio.

Semiconductors & Electronics

• Lam Research broke ground on a 120,000-square-foot Oregon lab that will expand the company's local cleanroom capacity by more than 50%.

• Agentrys raised $24.5 million to build agentic chip-design automation and expand customer work across verification and physical design.

• Achronix released a JESD204C IP core that supports 32 Gbps lanes and more than 1 Tbps of aggregate converter bandwidth on Speedster7t FPGAs.

Manufacturing & Automation

• Elanco completed a $120 million, 25,000-square-foot Kansas expansion designed to increase its animal-health biologics capacity by more than four times.

• Mastercam and ProShop linked CAD/CAM and shop-floor execution so machine shops can move program, tooling and cycle data directly into production management.

• Kargo automated receiving at Lineage's Decatur, Alabama facility, logging 64,000 receipts in six months at a site handling up to 500 pallets a day.

Energy & Materials

• AMPERA and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory formed a strategic partnership to develop and test advanced TRISO nuclear fuel.

• Hull Street Energy completed the acquisition of 1,263 MW of PJM peaking plants, including 677 MW in Illinois and 586 MW in Ohio.

• PSE&G opened its GridSmart residential battery pilot with a $5,000 incentive and up to $25,000 in on-bill financing for New Jersey customers.

Supply Chain & Freight

• Provident Industrial delivered a 497,280-square-foot final phase, completing a 1.42 million-square-foot logistics park in El Paso.

• Target Hospitality won a contract expected to generate about $250 million through August 2030 for a 1,100-person data-center workforce community in Pecos, Texas.

• NewPower Worldwide expanded its committed credit facility to $750 million to finance electronics inventory and larger customer programs.

Dealbook

• AMETEK completed its $5.0 billion acquisition of Indicor Instrumentation, adding a scaled portfolio of industrial measurement businesses.

• Grainger paid $210 million for AWM technology, intellectual property and related assets to expand automation inside industrial distribution.

• Target Hospitality secured about $250 million of contracted revenue for modular accommodations and services supporting a West Texas data-center build.

• NewPower Worldwide expanded its committed credit facility to $750 million to support inventory purchases and larger electronics programs.

• Hull Street Energy acquired 1,263 MW of PJM peaking capacity across Illinois and Ohio.

• SiFly raised a $20 million Series A led by Shield Capital to scale Q12 production, its supply chain and customer deployments.

• Agentrys raised $24.5 million, including a $19.1 million seed led by Etna Labs after a $5.4 million pre-seed led by MediaTek.

• Teragen Energy raised a $6 million pre-seed to expand testing and manufacturing infrastructure for modular fuel cells.

• Hexagon agreed to acquire Guidance Marine and its maritime positioning portfolio, with closing expected by year-end.

• CropX acquired U.S.-headquartered SCIO, adding portable crop-analysis technology protected by 44 granted patents.

• Acron Technologies agreed to sell its commercial training solutions business to FlightSafety International, consolidating aviation training systems under a long-running operator.

• Loeb Term Solutions closed a $25 million revolving credit line to expand equipment financing for industrial clients.

Back Tuesday.