Daily Hard Tech Headlines:
- Hybron secured a $25M seed round. The El Segundo startup develops next-generation composite manufacturing, enabling 100x faster production at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. Marque Ventures led the round.
- Askari Defense, the Atlanta-based C-UAS startup, has raised a $1.7M pre-seed round. The startup has developed products such as a man-portable, 3D-printed drone interceptor and a hand-launched, foldable, man-packable interceptor, the first targeting Group 1 and 2 drones and the second targeting Group 1. Investors include Knoll Ventures, Brickyard, Blackwing, Georgia Tech Foundation, Inc., Garrett Langley, Overline, and Teamworthy Ventures.
- U.S. Department of Agriculture is deploying a nationwide initiative to test and validate AgTech in real-world farm and ranch environments across the United States.
- Mariana Minerals has partnered with Pronto to deploy autonomous hauling capabilities at its copper mine and refinery in Utah.
- GE Vernova and Hitachi are deploying up to $40B to develop small modular reactors across Tennessee and Alabama through their joint venture, GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy.
- Foundry Robotics has raised a $19M seed round. The San Francisco startup is building robotic systems for manufacturing assembly. Investors include Khosla Ventures, Hanabi Capital, Red Glass Ventures, and Zero Shot Fund.
- Project Caprock has broken ground. The 540 MW data center in Lubbock, Texas is being developed by Aligned Data Centers.
- Rain Technology Solutions completed a live exercise to test its battlefield medical data platform, tracking critical health metrics across tactical networks for operational readiness, with goTenna enabling mesh communications, Iridium enabling satellite connectivity to the SIF TAK server, and sensors from Samsung Electronics, NIRSense Inc, and Mayo Clinic providing real-time physiological data (pictured below).