You know Ursa Major, the Colorado-based specialist in propulsion technologies that leverages additive manufacturing (AM) to create a wide range of motors for customers in the defense and space industries. They’re that company that always announces how they’ve just raised tens of millions of dollars.
Well, to no one’s surprise, it’s happened again! Ursa Major just closed a Series E round worth $100 million, led by Eclipse Ventures, which was also one of the lead investors in the company’s Series D round, as well as the D-1 round that they had to open in November 2023 because there was so much investor interest in the company, bringing the total raised in D and D-1 to $138 million.
Ursa Major adds Ronald Sugar and Gilman Louie to its Board of Directors. Image courtesy of Ursa Major.
According to Bloomberg, after the latest round — which also included $50 million in debt funding — the company’s valuation is now $600 million. Ursa Major also announced that it has booked over $115 million in orders through Q3, indicating that the company has already made substantial progress since its already impressive first half of the year.
Meanwhile, last month, Ursa Major announced that it was adding two impressive names to its board of directors: Dr. Ronald Sugar, a former CEO of Northrop Grumman, current Chairman of Uber, and member of the Apple Board of Directors; and Gilman Louie, former CEO of CIA venture fund In-Q-Tel. Louie is also co-founder and CEO of Alsop Louie Partners, which participated in the Series E round.
In a press release about Ursa Major’s raise of $100 million in a Series E round, Daniel Jablonsky, the company’s CEO, said, “This year, our Ursa Major team has proven we are building the next great aerospace and defense company. Our investors recognize our milestones this year — flying hypersonic several times, advancing our solid rocket motor programs, completing tests for space propulsion systems, and securing a record booking portfolio — are just the start of the next chapter for our company. This investment gives us the tools to solve critical strategic industrial base and national security challenges for the United States and our allies.”
Meanwhile, Lior Susan, Founding Partner at Eclipse, added, “Ursa Major is doing what few others in defense have achieved — scaling manufacturing and supply chains to deliver hypersonic systems and advanced propulsion at industrial scale. The Eclipse team is proud to support their mission to strengthen the U.S. and allied industrial base with real capability, built here and now.”
Ursa Major Tech tests the Hadley engine.
Ursa Major is extremely unusual for a well-funded enterprise, insofar as its progress actually manages to outpace its funding. At the end of last year and the beginning of this year, for instance, the company’s engines powered the first successful hypersonic flights in the U.S. since the 1960s, as well as the first-ever successful hypersonic flight by a fully autonomous craft.
In more general terms, Ursa Major has also clearly been ahead-of-the-curve in the Pentagon’s push to remake how it does acquisition, with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth noting in a recent speech on the reform initiative, “Speed to delivery is now our organizing principle.” Speed to delivery has been Ursa Major’s organizing principle for years.
Another noteworthy detail from the Bloomberg article on the Series E round is that, at its current hiring pace, Ursa Major will finish the year with 500 employees, more than doubling its personnel over 2025. That’s an important achievement in such a tough labor environment.
It has been a good couple of weeks for the AM industry, especially in the U.S. The amounts raised have been striking, but even more significantly, the money is going towards companies that have established legitimate models for reshoring U.S. manufacturing. That suggests that more good news could be on the horizon in the near future.
Images courtesy of Ursa Major
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