Ohio Redraws the Pharma Map

Happy Tuesday.

The build this week: Bayer is putting $2.2 billion into a drug manufacturing campus outside Columbus, and Ohio won it by building the workforce first.

Underneath: 🚨Anduril just unveiled a $6.6 billion submarine shipyard in Baltimore, the Energy Department offered Vistra $4.2 billion to upgrade three reactors, the Navy signed for more than 1,900 SM-6 missiles, and Schneider Electric agreed to pay $22.6 billion for PTC.

The Lead

The big picture: The states winning the biggest factory deals of the reshoring boom are the ones that train the workforce before the company shows up. Pharma companies have pledged over half a trillion dollars in new U.S. manufacturing, and site selectors now want proof a region can staff a plant before a project even comes around.

Driving the news: Bayer said last week it will build a $2.2 billion drug manufacturing campus in New Albany, outside Columbus, making cancer, heart and kidney medicines in two phases starting in 2031. The project brings about 600 permanent jobs and 1,500 construction jobs, and CEO Bill Anderson said he expects "90-plus percent" of hires to come from Ohio. "If we wanted people from someplace else, we would have gone there."

Why it matters: Ohio built the pipeline first. JobsOhio committed $30 million in 2025 to the Ohio Life Science Training Center, which opens next summer in the same business park Bayer chose, four years before Bayer's first line runs. Ohio Life Sciences' BioPathways program brings pharma careers into K-12 classrooms statewide, and Columbus State runs a 12-week life science program for newcomers. Ohio State and Nationwide Children's already feed employers like Andelyn Biosciences, which hired more than 50 people for its Columbus headquarters in one year. When we visited earlier this year, Andelyn COO Cyrill Kellerhals told us Ohio now rivals Research Triangle Park.

What's next: Bayer is placing New Albany in its U.S. "collaboration ecosystem" alongside Cambridge, Research Triangle Park, San Diego, Berkeley and Pittsburgh, solidifying Ohio’s place among the nation’s premier life sciences ecosystems. Other regions are running the same playbook. Houston built a training center at San Jacinto College that has helped attract Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers Squibb nearby, and Virginia's new $120 million center will train more than 2,000 pharma workers a year to staff $12.5 billion in new manufacturing from Lilly, Merck, and AstraZeneca.

Read our full story.

Watch our episode on the workforce pipelines feeding the new U.S. pharma map.

Defense & Space

• Raytheon won a Navy contract worth up to $24.4 billion to build more than 1,900 Standard Missile-6s over five years, with two more option years available.

• Boeing received a seven-year contract worth about $14.7 billion from Lockheed Martin to triple PAC-3 MSE seeker output in Huntsville, Alabama, where it expects to add hundreds of direct and indirect jobs.

• Ursa Major won $137 million in Navy awards to build solid rocket motors for two missiles, the Compact Air-to-Air Missile and the Naval Modular Missile.

• The Pentagon's counter-drone task force picked AeroVironment, Epirus, Kord and Boeing to test laser and microwave weapons at five U.S. bases, from Fort Bliss in Texas to Grand Forks in North Dakota, ahead of a December shoot-off.

• Kratos booked more than $100 million in space and cyber prototype contracts that run on its network of more than 190 sensors.

• Voyager Technologies won a $22.4 million Strategic Capabilities Office agreement to prototype dispensers that let small satellites fill unused room on larger launches.

• The Air Force broke ground at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City on a hangar that will handle B-52 upgrades first and B-21 maintenance later.

• Syntec Optics landed recurring production orders for Artemis III actuator parts, lifting the Rochester, New York, optics maker's space backlog 10%.

Maritime & Shipbuilding

• 🚨 Breaking: Anduril will spend $3.7 billion to build Arsenal-2, a 2-million-square-foot shipyard at Tradepoint Atlantic in Baltimore County, backed by a Navy contract worth up to $2.9 billion. The yard will start with Virginia-class submarine parts like torpedo tubes for Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding, then move up to full bow and stern sections. The company expects 3,100 jobs and $312 million in annual wages on the site of Bethlehem Steel's old Sparrows Point shipyard, with initial operations in 2030. It follows Arsenal-1 outside Columbus, Ohio, which rolled out its first Fury drone in July.

• USS Ted Stevens was commissioned in Whittier, Alaska as the second Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyer in service and will be homeported in Norfolk, Virginia.

• Seasats sent a fleet of solar-powered Lightfish drone boats to patrol the Gulf off Texas for the federal government, extending border work it began on the Rio Grande in January.

• Anduril bought Massachusetts-based Popoto Modem so its Copperhead underwater drones can share data and move in large formations.

Semiconductors & Electronics

• Skyworks closed its merger with Qorvo, creating an Irvine, California, maker of RF and analog chips with about 8,000 engineers.

• EMD Electronics opened a 38,000-square-foot semiconductor materials lab in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, part of a $200 million U.S. investment.

• Navitas and Microchip unveiled an 800-volt power design for AI server racks that targets up to 96% peak efficiency.

• Global chip sales topped $1 trillion for the year through August, a first, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

Manufacturing & Automation

• LG Electronics will spend $63.9 million on its first U.S. chiller plant in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, where 164 workers will build large air-cooled chillers near the Port of Virginia.

• Teradyne made a strategic investment in Bright Machines to build robotic assembly and test lines for AI infrastructure hardware.

• Simpson Strong-Tie broke ground on a $19 million plant in Fulton, Missouri that will make automated truss and framing equipment and add 24 jobs.

• RobCo passed a $1 billion valuation in a $40 million round; the robot maker builds in Austin and sells to factories in about a dozen states.

Energy & Materials

• The Energy Department offered Vistra a conditional loan of up to $4.2 billion to uprate three reactors, Beaver Valley in Pennsylvania and Davis-Besse and Perry in Ohio, adding 433 megawatts that Meta has already agreed to buy. Perry's 197-megawatt uprate goes first, with new power targeted for 2031.

• Westwin Elements picked Natchez, Mississippi, for a $502 million nickel refinery that will employ 134 people at an average of about $84,000 a year, with first production targeted for 2029.

• Wartsila will supply 15 gas engines making 282 megawatts of onsite power for a U.S. data center, its seventh U.S. data-center order.

• American Lithium Energy opened its expanded battery factory in Vista, California, growing from 23,000 to 82,000 square feet to make cells for aerospace and defense.

• Iowa authorized $1.36 billion in tax incentives for Mesabi Metallics' planned $15 billion steel mill in Lee County, which is expected to employ at least 1,750 people.

Supply Chain & Freight

• C.H. Robinson agreed to buy RXO for about $5.8 billion, folding the Charlotte freight broker into its North American Surface Transportation unit, with a close expected in the first half of 2027.

• Holman will lease, retrofit and service yard trucks running ISEE's autonomy system, giving the startup a fleet partner to scale across North America.

• Evri entered the U.S. delivery market by buying Cross Border Connect, a Boca Raton operator that handles pickup and customs at six U.S. ports of entry.

• Optimus Technology bought the SmartHop freight platform and will give it to small and midsize carriers for free.

Dealbook

• Schneider Electric agreed to buy PTC for about $22.6 billion in cash, its largest deal ever, adding PTC's product-design software to its industrial automation business.

• C.H. Robinson will pay $17.25 in cash plus 0.0856 of a share for each RXO share.

• Skyworks closed its Qorvo deal, paying $32.50 in cash plus 0.960 Skyworks shares for each Qorvo share.

• FieldAI is reportedly raising $700 million at about a $10 billion valuation for AI models that run robots on construction, energy and public-sector jobs.

• RobCo sold $40 million of shares at a valuation above $1 billion, mostly from current and former employees.

• SafeWorld came out of stealth with a $12.2 million seed round co-led by Shine Capital and a16z speedrun to test robots against simulated contact with people.

Back Thursday.