Aerojet, NOAA, Figure: $600M+ Deals in Deep Tech

Iron reactors, agri-satellites & threat monitoring lead dual-use bets. Satellite Spotlight, Edition 38.

Author

Imagining Forward
September 17, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

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PSA Dm to volunteer. We are hosting a satcom panel at SF Tech Week and a space industrialization panel at LA Tech Week next month.

deal flow

government

  • Aerojet Rocketdyne, L3Harris wins $292M DoW contract for solid rocket motor & propulsion manufacturing (SN).

  • NOAA purchases $24.3M of GNSS-RO weather data from PlanetiQ (VS).

  • ArianeGroup and DGA, French defense procurement, partner on ballistic missiles SLBM for oceanic threats (NT).

seed

  • AegisAI raises $13M Seed by Accel, Foundational Capital for email cyber threats (TC).

  • Messium raises $3.9M Seed by UKI2S, Expansion Aerospace for hyperspectal satellites to monitor agriculture (VS).

  • FeX Energy raises $3.5M Seed by Fathom, Amplify, Antares for iron reactors to power heavy industries (BK).

  • Rendezvous raises $3M Pre Seed by Aurelia, 8090, ATX Venture for modular swarm hardware assembly in orbit (TC).

  • LocusX raises $2.2M Seed by Diagram, Triptyq to debug game development with AI (BK).

  • MicroFactory raises $1.5M Pre Seed by Naval Ravikant for precision task robots (TC).

series A+

  • ReOrbit raises $53M Series A by Springvest, Varma, Elo for earth observation & satcoms in retail & defense (ES).

  • Figure raises $39M Series C by Parkway, Brookfield, Nvidia, Intel for factory & warehouse robots (TC).

  • Born raises $15M Series A by Accel, Tencent, Laton for AI Tamagotchi to target loneliness (TC)

m&a

  • IonQ to acquire Vector Atomic for PNT quantum sensors & $200M+ in public contracts (BW).

  • Pablo Air & VOLK merge combining UAV swarm intelligence with defence production (AT).

headlines

  • Axiom Space, Spacebilt, Microchip, Phison, Skyloom partner to establish orbital datacenter ODC on ISS (AS).

  • Anduril & Impulse Space partner for space traffic with high precision RPO in GEO (AN).

  • Iridium Communications & Deutsche Telekom partner on LEO IoT connectivity for transportation, agriculture (VS).

  • SFL Missions & Hawkeye 360 partner on maritime & national security RF detection (MG).

curious reads

  • Space debris is a billion dollar economy (HN).

  • Tohoku University clears space junk in LEO with ion engine plasma thruster innovation (SC).

community spotlight

SoCal Deep Tech Week
today, 09/17

  • Rocket City SFA meetup (LA).

  • Nuclear renaissance panel (LA).

thursday, 09/18

  • Angel investor mixer (NYC).

  • AI demo night (NYC).

  • Web3 AI pitch night (NYC).

  • Female founders x Antler x Rho (NYC).

  • Deeptech investor connect (NYC).

  • Supply chain resilience (LA).

  • Demo day (LA).

  • Deep tech symposium (LA).

  • Sustainability cocktails (LA).

  • US Green Council game night (LA).

friday, 09/19

  • Founder investor breakfast (NYC).

  • Water resiliency summit (LA).

saturday, 09/20

  • Taiwan demo day (LA).

monday, 09/22

  • AI, Energy & Carbon panel (NYC).

  • Climate tech demo x AWS (NYC).

  • Monozukuri VC meetup (NYC).

upcoming

  • NY Climate Tech Week.

  • IAC.

cosmic weekly insights

trends in 30 seconds

Dual use defense pours $200M+ in propulsion, SLBMs, & quantum sensing

Robotics surge attracts capital for factory automation & modular in space assembly.

Orbital infrastructure early buildout with data centers and IoT connectivity innovations.

💻 Close deals fast: Private partnerships & BD.

🤝 Meet industry partners irl: Industry events.

✍🏻 Publish & Earn: White papers & op-eds.

☎️ Schedule a call: Goals, intros, collabs.

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