Air defense, cloud and propulsion startup investment rounds to note

Singularity

This developer of air defense systems has emerged from stealth mode following its $80 million Series A capital raise to move ahead on its development and flight testing agenda.

Co-founders Jack Oswald and Shail Giroux, respectively CEO and chief operating officer, started Singularity to produce drones and munitions on a lower cost curve and at greater scale. Singularity cites the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran as highlighting the role of these technologies in military operations.

Khosla Ventures and Felicis led the Series A round that also involved AE Ventures, an arm of AE Industrial Partners that is entering as a seed investor. New Enterprise Associates also is now a seed investor in Singularity.

Other participants in the Series A round included Long Journey, Harpoon, Menlo Ventures, Y Combinator, Decisive Point, New Vista Sunflower, and Soma.

Singularity touts its production approach as inspired by the automotive industry, to the point that it recruited employees from the likes of Tesla and Toyota to join the team.

As Singularity sees the world, automotive principles of building all subsystems in-house and sourcing commercial components help scale production quicker than sourcing various parts from dozens of suppliers.

Spectro Cloud

This provider of software to help enterprises manage their artificial intelligence infrastructures has collected $100 million in Series D capital to aid its product development, go-to-market and ecosystem expansion efforts.

Spectro Cloud opened for business in 2019 to help platform teams and cloud computing providers modernize and manage their infrastructures to account for AI requirements.

The company built its PaletteAI product to act as a single operating model for building and running AI infrastructure, as well as controlling token costs and governing environments at scale.

The growth equity arm of Goldman Sachs’ alternative investments unit led the Series D round that also involved Maximus, which stood up its ventures arm in 2023. Other participants included AMD Ventures, Ericsson and LG Technology Ventures.

Spectro Cloud’s strategy and vision is to help public sector and other enterprise organizations move their AI infrastructures into production across different cloud setups, including neocloud and sovereign cloud environments.

Spectro Cloud cites the U.S. Air Force, T-Mobile and Airbus as users of its platform to manage and modernize their infrastructures with AI in mind.

Venus Aerospace

This startup propulsion system maker has fetched $91 million in Series B capital for efforts to expand its capacity for developing and producing its rocket engine technology for hypersonic flight and space transportation.

Venus Aerospace opened for business in 2020 to manufacture rotating-detonation rocket engines, which generate thrust by using a continuous-rotating detonation wave as opposed to traditional combustion methods.

As Venus sees the world, the RDRE design is a more efficient and higher-performing alternative that can enable hypersonic vehicles and space systems. Venus builds the engines with three-dimensional printed components and other standard materials, all of which are acquired from U.S. sources.

Mercury Fund led the Series B round that also involved Lockheed Martin Ventures, the defense company’s investment arm that focuses on startups and other young companies. Other participants included MESH, PEAK6, Draper Associates, Starboard Star Venture Capital and Green Sands Equity.

Lockheed Martin Ventures made an investment in Venus in October 2025, five months after Venus conducted a high-thrust test flight of its roughly 2,000-pound-thrust RDRE engine.

Munitions, space launch vehicles, orbital transfer vehicles and lunar landers are among Venus’ touted use cases for the engine.

Lockheed Martin Ventures

Staying with the world’s largest defense company, this section focuses more on what is to come for the ventures arm following its boost in capacity from $400 million to $1 billion.

Lockheed Martin Ventures is spreading its wings to the U.K. and Europe by opening an office in London, which is targeting $100 million in investments in that part of the world.

The idea is to accelerate the insertion of new technologies into defense systems and strengthen the transatlantic defense industrial base, Lockheed said.

Military organizations in Europe are increasingly seeking to acquire sovereign capabilities and strengthen their supply chains.

Lockheed said the ventures arm has already invested in a “number of promising companies in Europe” and expects to close more agreements soon.

Quantum computing, autonomy, artificial intelligence, directed energy, advanced materials and computer chips are examples of where Lockheed Martin Ventures has focused its U.S. investments.