Erik Kriessmann

Anduril is investing $3.7B into Arsenal-2.
The next great American Shipyard.

Anduril is building America's largest shipyard since WWII. This space needs bold investment and decisive action.

In the 1790s, Baltimoore clippers were the fastest and most advanced sailing ships of their time. King George III didn't stand a chance. Time to run the same play.

One of my favorite clips from ⁦@derekjeter⁩ The Captain. It’s a must watch.

The Consupocalypse

Consumer commerce is having its own SaaSpocalypse moment thanks to Muse, Instinct and personal agents. (eg: Month to date Booking share price is -21%, Expedia is -18%, and Airbnb is -18%)

IMO, when the dust settles, companies that will be left standing will have some or all of the following:

1. Differentiated physical (not just digital) infrastructure and fulfillment
2. Hard to access supply
3. Powerful local network effects
4. Proprietary data loops that allows better personalization than a general purpose agent can
5. Differentiated Membership / reward programs that drive true loyalty
6. Consumer trust

We will go beyond theoretical moats discussions and truly see which moats are durable.

Coming soon to a theater near you...BLACKBEARD!

@USPACOM @CENTCOM @PAEAviation

A critical piece of America’s drone supply chain is coming home.

Vulcan Elements has been competitively selected by the U.S. Army to supply high-performance rare magnets for SkyFoundry — the Army’s vertically integrated initiative to produce one million drones per year in the United States. Our magnets will help power the brushless direct current motors at the heart of these systems.

Vulcan was chosen after providing data sheets that matched the high-performance specifications required by the Army. A key requirement was “a fully domestic, vertically integrated manufacturing process.” The Army also required multiple evaluations of Vulcan’s capability and past performance by current customers.

The award marks Vulcan’s 10th Pentagon contract since 2024 and reflects our capability to manufacture high-performance magnets for some of the country’s most critical technologies.

As small drone systems become even more critical on the modern battlefield, we’re committed to ensuring that our military can manufacture them without having to ask for permission. This isn’t just a manufacturing challenge; it’s a national security imperative.

My second interview with @2112Power, Founder and CEO of @HadrianInc.

0:10 How to scale manufacturing in the US
1:42 Building ahead of contracts
4:21 Burn rate & execution risk
6:40 Bets that aren’t risky to you but are risky to everyone else
8:34 Scaling capacity
10:45 Operating with an 80% risk of death
13:10 Sprinting through 1-way doors
16:51 “Sometimes you gotta roll a hard 6”
18:37 Constructing a new factory
21:45 Learning how to build factories
28:14 Surviving company killing events
32:12 Radically pulling forward timelines
37:13 How financing changes as you scale from $1M revenue to $1B revenue
38:53 Growing from 725 to 1,325 employees in 4 months
43:00 Deciding which contracts to go after
45:33 What’s stopping you from growing faster?
50:02 “Just f*cking do it”
53:23 Designing the finance side of the business
56:51 Educating investors on manufacturing and capex heavy businesses
59:08 Deciding which competitive advantages to optimize for
1:02:08 Building trust with government partners
1:04:54 False doors
1:09:12 Figuring out the highest leverage activities
1:11:04 Investing in velocity
1:13:59 Energy management

America needs to build again.

@ScottNolan @generalmatter is rebuilding a safe and clean nuclear fuel supply chain here at home.

energy is national security and we @antifund @geoffwoo are proud investors and backers of Scott & General Matter on leading the way

Blackbeard is going into production. The U.S. Navy has awarded Castelion a production order valued at up to $200 million for an initial lot of Blackbeard Hypersonic Weapons, following the 50 EOC rounds ordered in June. Engineered from day one for the production line. Grateful to PAE(A) for the trust and the urgency. castelion.com/news/blackbear…

Today, Covenant is emerging from stealth and introducing Anthem: a heavy-payload deep precision strike capability designed for mass production, with deliveries beginning in the thousands in 2027.

We’ve raised $250 million, flown Anthem in more than 200 tests, and secured approximately $150 million in orders, including contracts with the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and key international allies.

We’re building Anthem at our 105,000-square-foot production facility in Dallas, alongside factories in Germany and Israel.

Covenant is backed by @a16z, @foundersfund, @Lux_Capital, @lightspeedvp, @8vc, @aleph, and @AltimeterCap.

Deep precision strike is the biggest gap in the arsenal of the West, and we spent the last two years building Anthem to fill it.

Now we deliver at scale.

My conversation with @ZachBDell, co-founder of @basepowerco.

0:00 Energy Abundance & the Power Demands of AI
6:15 How Batteries Make the Grid More Efficient
9:09 Early Ventures & the Insight Behind Base
15:34 We Don't Sell Batteries. We Sell Electricity.
22:25 How Base Works With Utilities & Competes for Customers
30:44 Learning From Michael Dell: The "Dad Terminal"
32:22 Vertical Integration & Lessons From SpaceX
39:34 Writing Clearly & Making Time to Think
44:53 North Stars, Turtles & Relentless Execution
53:55 Learning From Great Founders & Building a Beloved Brand
56:27 What's Your Constraint?
1:06:26 Base Core & Taking Control of Manufacturing
1:11:02 A Lifelong Mission & the Last Company He'll Build

Includes paid partnerships.

The US does not have hypersonic capability at the necessary scale and at a cost the country can sustain. That's what Castelion is building and what the $1B series C scales.

Castelion is proud to announce our $1 billion Series C. We’re growing fast and our mission hasn't changed: build the weapons required to deter the next major war, affordably, rapidly, and at massive scale.

This funding accelerates Blackbeard production, develops a longer-range strike system, and starts work on defensive systems.

Thank you to @JPMorgan Chase's Strategic Investment Group, @a16z, @OneCarlyle, @lightspeedvp, @LavrockVC, @AltimeterCap, @TRowePrice, @generalcatalyst, and #Interlagos for backing that work. castelion.com/news/series-c/

Hadrian is announcing our $1.37B Series D - watch below for a comprehensive update on our plans to reinvest billions to meet generational demand for Factories-as-a-service & Opus, our physical AI platform for factory autonomy — as well as full stack munitions production, advanced foundries, international expansion, drone dominance, the Organic Industrial Base, and most importantly, increase Equity stakes for our workforce in LA, Alabama and Arizona.

Thank you to our team and investors for enabling us to accelerate our mission to reshore, rescale and upgrade the Defense Industrial Base.

The Factory is the Product.

Today, we're launching Base Core, our own battery designed & built in Texas, and announcing our $1B Series D to bring it to homes across the country.

Three years ago, we started Base with a belief that batteries were the unlock to energy abundance. We saw battery storage as the foundation of a modern energy system, and believed we could win the market with vertical integration, technology, and relentless execution (what we now call Base Pace). So we set out to build a network of distributed batteries to deliver affordable, reliable electricity to homeowners and utilities.

While the job is far from finished, the launch of Base Core is the most meaningful step in that plan. We’ve spent the last few years learning hard lessons about building a distributed battery fleet, going from 1 install per day in June of ‘24 to 100 installs per day in June of ‘26. These lessons - how the battery is shipped, installed, used, and monitored - informed the design of Core. Now, Core will be the foundation of the company's next phase of growth.

Base Core is a first-of-its-kind home battery. At ~40 kWh it is 3x the size of most home batteries, providing up to 36 hours of backup for the average home. In the event of multi-day outage, Core is equipped with a (first of its kind) generator port - pull out a small portable generator and charge the battery back up to keep your home running as long as you need. When an outage does happen, the backup is seamless - most members won't even notice the grid went down. It's built to withstand Texas summers, Chicago Winters, and everything in between. And finally, it’s manufactured by our team in Austin, at Base Factory 1, right across the street from our HQ.

This new capital will bring Core to more homes and to accelerate our ambition beyond batteries. The round is co-led by Ribbit, Addition, Valor, and JP Morgan, with participation from new major investors D1, Sands, Coatue, Layer Global, and Energy Impact Partners. All of Base’s major existing investors are re-investing, including Thrive, Altimeter, Lightspeed, a16z, CapitalG, Trust, and more. This brings our valuation to $13B.

As we enter the most important growth period in the history of the electricity industry, our mission has not changed - advance human prosperity by delivering the world's most affordable and reliable electricity. Our strategy has not changed - technology, plus vertical integration, plus relentless execution, leads to a compounding cost advantage. What has changed is the scope of our ambition - this new capital, along with the team and capabilities we've built over the last three years, positions us to build technology across the electric stack, including what it takes to serve surging demand from AI, and to deepen our partnerships with utilities as they work to meet rising demands.

Electricity is the largest and most essential industry in the world, and it does not have a defining technology company. The company that delivers the most affordable, reliable power will be one of the largest and most impactful companies in the world. We intend to build it. If you'd like to join us, reach out.

Onwards.

basepowercompany.com/core.

Our biggest round yet: @K2SpaceCo has raised a $500M Series D at a $6.8B post-money valuation. The round was led by @kleinerperkins and @ICONIQCapital, with participation from @CapitalG, @lightspeedvp, @AltimeterCap, @sparkcapital, Sands Capital, @ARKInvest, @TRowePrice, and other existing investors.

"Scaling” is probably the word I’ve used most often the past few months in conversations with our investors, customers, and employees when talking about what’s next for K2 Space in 2027 and beyond: 
--We’re going to continue to scale up mass production, to deliver against the $1B + in contracts we’ve won to-date.
--We’re going to scale up the satellite itself, from the 20kW Mega to the 100kW class Giga. Its no longer just 100kW, but we’ll save that update for another day.

The capital from the Series D will turbocharge this scaling.  

Thanks to everyone who has been on this journey with us for the last four years – let's keep building bigger.

Okta has signed a definitive agreement to acquire @permisosecurity! We’re excited to bring together the best identity threat detection, posture management, and runtime protection offerings to help organizations gain deeper visibility, reduce risk, and securely adopt AI at scale. bit.ly/45ySR0E

America's Next 250 by @ScottNolan

notboring.co/p/americas-nex…

To rebuild the arsenal, we must hyperscale manufacturing. Shorten the Build Chain. Close the Kill Chain.