Hadrian

For decades, the U.S. aerospace and defense industries have faced issues created by a decades-old system of manufacturing—broken supply chains, lead times, and aging machine shops have stifled innovation and potentially hurt national security. As defense tech becomes faster and geopolitical threats intensify, the need for better, faster, automated, and domestic forms of manufacturing has become vital.

That's where Hadrian, a California-based startup founded by Chris Power, has nationally outdated infrastructure with advanced AI-powered precision factories with unique design intended for aerospace and defense technologies. The firm makes real parts for rockets, drones, satellites, fighter jets, and more using advanced automated processes, own software, and people-robot interactions. Its mission is nothing less than to change American defense manufacturing into a more scalable, faster, and digital-first enterprise. Hadrian is helping to create a new industrial spine for the 21st century by focusing on the ecosystem of startups and major defense primes. The company’s workflow begins by receiving blueprints for high-tolerance metal parts from customers like SpaceX or Lockheed Martin; after which it manufactures those parts in-house, drawing on its own software stack. Hadrian gives every junior machinist all of the know-how and operating procedures through its internal operating system dubbed “Flow”, and it models all of the upstream functions with an ERP-type application called “Atlas”, which orchestrates the production processes in real-time. Thus the firm is able to cut the typical delivery timeline for parts from 20 weeks to less than 3 weeks, which helps alleviate a large procurement bottleneck for U.S. defense innovation. The factories possess a high level of automation and still utilize skilled labor, creating a semi-automated hybrid model that effectively combines velocity, precision, and the capacity to customize for customer’s demands. Hadrian’s value proposition is greater than just providing automation. It provides this service to defense / space innovators so they can move from prototyping to scaled production without having to invest in their own internal machining capacity. From the firm’s perspective this enables start ups to more rapidly scale, while it enables primes to de-risk their supply chains. In 2024, Hadrian acquired Datum Source, a procurement platform launched by SpaceX alumni, to expand and accelerate customer access to fabrication / machining capacity and sourcing capabilities. The company’s operations now include a 100,000 sqft flagship factory in Torrance, California, and plans have already been developed to construct additional factories in Texas and Florida and continue to scale across strategic defense corridors.

credits:- Oddup Blog

The company has secured its fair share of capital. Most recently, it raised $$117 million in Series B funding at the beginning of 2024 led by Lux Capital - for a total of over $$220 million in funding so far. The firm has also attracted some noteworthy investors like Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Founders Fund, Construct Capital, and Lockheed Martin Ventures. With a current valuation of $500 million plus, these investors have enabled Hadrian to build world-class software and factory operations. Financially, it has, and continues, to grow exponentially. From when it started collecting annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2022 to now in 2024, the firm progressed from $1 million to over $35 million in ARR. Most impressively, Hadrian became profitable in Q2 2023 through long term defense manufacturing contracts, and relatively low cost structures. While the company did not disclose profit numbers, reliable insiders indicate the firm finished 2024 with a net profit margin between 8-12%, which is remarkable in a capital intensive domain like precision aerospace manufacturing. By automating most of the manual labor traditionally accompanying machining and compressing delivery, Hadrian has successfully realized strong unit economics early in their product lifecycle. In its growth, Hadrian now has over 150 full-time employees working across the factory floor, its software teams, and its leadership team. The company has attracted talented engineers and operations specialists from organizations like SpaceX, Palantir, Tesla, and Anduril. The operational headquarters remains in Los Angeles County, but with plans for new factories and expansion the geographic footprint is expanding quickly. The company aims to have at least 3 regional manufacturing hubs across the U.S. to deliver resilience and capacity to ramp up national defense mobilization quickly.

The firm’s pricing system is primarily usage-based, and is adjusted to be adaptable for the complexity, volume, and materials for each precision part that is ordered. It does not use fixed rates or require long-term contracts. Hadrian offers scalable pricing for exactly what the client needs to manufacture that is perfect for early-stage defence startups and large aerospace primes alike. This way, predictable margins can be achieved while maintaining flexibility, and the company also has flexibility of revenue capture across the value chain, because the company owns the software and the factory infrastructure. Each business opportunity is designed to offer a faster turnaround time for the part, with minimal cost premiums to ensure that Hadrian's earnings model is focused on both revenue growth and eventual profitability, while ensuring a recurring income stream from long multi-year manufacturing agreements is the financial backbone of the business. 

With that, it should be noted that Hadrian does have competitors. Its main competitors include Machina Labs, which does robotic arms for sheet metal forming; Varda Space Industries, which overlaps in high-precision aerospace component manufacturing; and legacy defense contractors with internal shop capabilities like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. Finally, traditional precision CNC shops still serve a good number of primes, as well as startups—but they typically supply a slower, more expensive, and harder to scale solution. Hadrian's differentiation from this injury to the defense market base, the other manufacturing companies are robots, with robots and are fundamentally a piece of software, and we can logically build parts in off the shell products with software, that's what gives them control. It is also capable of serving both large defense primes and fast-moving lead users, providing it a competitive edge in this fragmented and antiquated market.

Looking ahead, Hadrian plans to grow its footprint throughout the United States, and plans to scale its factory operations to meet the growing environmental demands within hypersonics, satellite constellations, and defense systems. The firm also plans to dig into its software capabilities too, providing customers with insight and control over part production. It may explore international expansion, but in the mean time Hadrian has its focus on strengthening the capabilities of the U.S. industrial base. In the long-run, the company knows what it wants to be. It wants to be the foundational layer of American defense manufacturing just like TSMC is for global semiconductors. Chris Power, the company’s CEO, clearly stated his vision: "America cannot fight a war with components built in 1970. We are putting the industrial base back together from the ground up—with software, with automation, and with intention." With an audacious mission, an extensive amount of investor support, growing infrastructure, and increasing partnerships with government, Hadrian is ready to completely reframe what it means to build for the defense frontier. As innovation moves quickly forward in aerospace and national security, Hadrian's model may very well be the new framework for the future of American manufacturing—high-tech, high-speed, and completely "made in America."

Click here to access Hadrian's website.