When the U.S. began prioritizing onshore manufacturing for national security purposes after years of relying on other countries, Divergent Technologies Inc. was thrust into the spotlight.

Divergent, a Torrance-based manufacturing startup, announced in mid-September it raised $290 million in series E funding, valuing the company at $2.3 billion. The round, consisting of $40 million debt capital and $250 million in equity capital, was led by Rochefort Asset Management.

Its relatively newfound fame was a happy accident for the company. Divergent, which manufactures weapons parts for the U.S. military, is one of several companies that’s experiencing success as the nation moves toward onshore manufacturing and reviving a once-stagnant weapons industry.

Divergent was founded in 2014, long before geopolitical tension and global war put the spotlight on the U.S.’s lack of manufacturing infrastructure. At the time, father-son duo Kevin and Lukas Czinger, who took over the company in 2024, have focused primarily on the automotive industry. Today, its success in what used to be a relatively niche market has become globally relevant.

“Divergent is delivering exactly what America needs – a stronger, faster and more adaptable industrial base,” Kyle Bass, co-chief executive of Rochefort Asset Management, said in a statement. “By uniting advanced software and hardware into a single platform, Divergent is proving that the U.S. can out-innovate and out-produce on the global stage.”

Humble beginnings in automotive

Divergent signed customers like McLaren Automotive, Bugatti Automobile and Aston Martin Lagonda Limited and began developing and manufacturing their highly engineered chassis structures.

“That is really where industrial manufacturing has been focused on, and where a lot of the pain for these industries sits,” Lukas Czinger said.

Indeed, manufacturing complex structures at scale happens largely through either casting or stamping, and building the original casting mold or stamping die takes years of engineering and costs billions of dollars to produce. Once the company makes it, it can manufacture one car repeatedly to gradually amortize the cost of making the tool.

But there’s a catch.

“You can only make this one thing really well,” Czinger said. “When that one thing doesn’t sell well, or when there’s a new demand signal for a different product, then you have these companies that are instantly in a really large amount of trouble.”

Divergent’s goal is to move away from a model where industrial manufacturing is only cost effective through casting and stamping – a lofty one that took more than 600 patents and hundreds of millions of dollars to build out. The source code was built by scratch, and the company engineered its own materials and 3D printer. At the end, the company was able to scale computing, engineering and manufacturing a new chassis – the main frame of a vehicle – from years to single-digit days.

“These capital cycles are almost more demanding, and the problem only gets worse across more and more products and more and more volume,” Czinger said. “So, if you can show up with something that is actually faster, better and cheaper, you’ve got a great commercial business.”

Tapping into a new market

Today, amid an uptick in global demand for fast-moving, low-cost weapons, Divergent has been focused on a new customer base. In the last three years, it accumulated more than 20 partnerships with weapons-focused companies including General Atomics, Lockheed Martin Corp., Anduril and El Segundo-based Castelion.

“We started developing our own machine, and the product brief for that machine changed to a U.S. supply chain for all critical systems including the laser system, and we invested a lot of dollars to help build that supply chain in the U.S.”

General Atomics went from a base design with 200 composite parts to four printed parts, and a cast aluminum structure to a printed aluminum structure, which reduced mass by 30%. Once scaled up, Divergent is able to manufacture one structure in 16 hours, compared to the design’s previous 12-day production timeline.

“We saw this onshoring agenda a few years back, so we started positioning our business from a supply chain standpoint to be resilient to that,” Czinger said.