Space, energy and cyber venture rounds to highlight

Agile Space Industries

This maker of in-space chemical propulsion systems has collected $17 million in Series A equity capital, a figure $2 million higher than the initial target with 70% of the financing from existing investors.

Lockheed Martin’s venture capital arm for investing in young technology companies led a financing round for Agile in the fall of 2024 and is continuing its involvement.

Agile is led by CEO Chris Pearson and designs chemical-propulsion rocket thrusters via additive manufacturing techniques. The company started in 2019 to position for opportunities in satellite constellations, missions to the Moon and national security programs.

Agile will use the newfound investment for facility buildouts in Colorado, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania to scale production and test throughput.

Caruso Ventures and Howdy Partners led the Series A round. Other named participants included Cortado Ventures, Denver Ventures and Veteran Ventures.

Efficient Computer

This builder of general-purpose processors that takes energy efficiency into account has fetched $60 million in Series A capital to accelerate its product roadmap and grow the team of engineers and developers.

RTX Ventures, the defense giant’s arm for investing in young tech firms, participated in the round as Efficient Computer naturally falls within the team’s “Compute” focus area. RTX has seven areas that it gears venture investment toward.

Efficient Computer was co-founded in 2022 by CEO Brandon Lucia and his colleagues to build computer processors with lower data movement and architectural overhead than traditional systems.

In general, the idea is to take larger amounts of computer power across edge and infrastructure environments being shaped and reshaped by artificial intelligence.

Triatomic Capital led the Series A round with other named participants including Eclipse, Union Square Ventures, Overlap Holdings, Box Group, Toyota Ventures and Overmatch Ventures

Radiant Industries

In December, this startup pushing to mass produce portable nuclear microreactors completed a $300 million Series D raise to advance on its efforts to break ground on a new factory early this year.

Radiant has since added a new investor in Lockheed Martin Ventures, a move that brings another government market name to the company’s network of backers alongside Washington Harbour Partners.

For Radiant, bringing in a defense industry partner like Lockheed could open more doors for the five-year-old company in the national security landscape.

Radiant is developing nuclear generators to provide reliable power for remote communities, critical infrastructure and defense applications. Led by CEO and founder Doug Bernauer, Radiant working to start up its first reactor this summer at the Idaho National Laboratory’s Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments facility.

All of this is taking place against the larger economic and societal backdrop of increasing electricity demands and stresses on the grid. Many observers see nuclear as a scalable alternative source for power, even when considering the challenges related to production and what to do with the spent fuel.

Seasats

This startup maker of small uncrewed surface vehicles has collected $20 million in Series A capital to fund its work on expanding new facilities, adding new product lines and growing the workforce.

Seasats was founded in 2020 by CEO Mike Flanigan and his colleagues to develop solar-powered USVs for defense, commercial and scientific missions. Seasats sees its vessels as being able to support efforts in resupply and ISR – intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

The company touts its long-endurance vessel as having fully crossed both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, while the interceptor has conducted continuous operations for at least one week.

Within the past year, Seasats has secured contracts with the Navy and Marine Corps for vessel production. Seasats is also participating in the Defense Department’s Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies (APFIT) program, which is set up to fund new technologies that have completed development and look ready to scale.

Konvoy Ventures led the Series A round that also included participation from Shield Capital, DNS Capital, Techstars, Tanis Venture Management, Crumpton Ventures and Dorado Group.

VulnCheck

This specialist in exploit intelligence work has fetched $25 million in Series B capital to expand its offerings that work to help organizations apply automation and artificial intelligence in their threat detection efforts.

In-Q-Tel, the intelligence community’s venture capital arm, is continuing its involvement in VulnCheck after first investing in the company in the summer of 2022. In-Q-Tel has subsequently participated in two investment rounds including this one.

VulnCheck was founded in 2021 by CEO Anthony Bettini with the goal of reducing the timing gap between identifying exploits and acting upon them.

Exploit intelligence is a discipline of cybersecurity that works to analyze active threats from diverse sources and shift security strategies from a reactive to a proactive posture. The company designs its software tool to provide operators a fully autonomous, machine-consumable dataset that analyzes and provides first-party evidence of a network exploit.

Sorenson Capital led the Series B round that also included participation from National Grid Partners and Ten Eleven Ventures.