Castelion Corp. raised nearly $1.1 billion in August at a $13 billion valuation, making the El Segundo-based weapons manufacturer the third most valuable venture-backed startup in Los Angeles.
The fundraise also represents the fourth above $1 billion among L.A.-area startups in recent months.
The round came from a combined $800 million in equity and $250 million in a revolving credit facility. JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group, Andreessen Horowitz and The Carlyle Group co-led Castelion’s equity round. El Segundo-based Interlagos Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lavrock Ventures, General Catalyst and T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. joined the funding round.
Castelion has now raised more than $2 billion since it was founded in 2023 and has amassed more than $500 million in military contracts in the past 18 months. In late May, Castelion signed a first-of-its-kind deal with the U.S. Department of Defense to manufacture around 500 of its low-cost, high-rate missiles every year.
“Deterrence depends on unapologetic American strength; highly capable weapon systems that adversaries fear produced in quantities they can’t imagine at a price taxpayers can afford,” Bryon Hargis, Castelion’s co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement.
New manufacturing generation
The company’s first deployable missile, a long-range hypersonic strike weapon called Blackbeard, is expected to be delivered to active combat units by 2027. The funding will go towards increasing production capacity for Blackbeard, which is manufactured on a 1,000-acre facility in New Mexico called Project Ranger Campus. Funding will also be used to accelerate development of a new weapon with longer-range strike capabilities.
 “There’s a manufacturing renaissance underway and this round turbocharges American production of Blackbeard,” Hargis said. “Blackbeard is an example of what America can do when private capital and government work together.”
The U.S. has indeed amped up its collaboration with young, venture-funded companies like the four-year-old Castelion. According to Pitchbook, the Defense Department’s median deal value so far in 2026 is around $25 million, the highest seen since 1982. It’s a far cry from how the department has been operating the last 30 years, when it relied solely on legacy East Coast companies like RTX Corp. or Lockheed Martin Corp. to develop pricier, slow-to-make weapons.
“We backed Castelion when it was a small team that wanted to build what the department of war most needed faster and cheaper than the experts thought possible,” Katherine Boyle, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said in a statement.
Rising valuations
As the U.S. taps Los Angeles startups to update its weapons arsenal and bolster its national security projects, funding is turning these small startups into billion-dollar Goliaths. Castelion is now the third highest-valued venture-backed company in Los Angeles, behind Travis Kalanick’s manufacturing-focused Atoms Inc. and Burbank-based live-streaming shopping platform Whatnot Inc. More than 25% of L.A.’s venture-backed unicorns are in the aerospace, space and wartime sector, making up the majority of the region’s tech value. Â
“The company has contracts in hand, a manufacturing campus built with its own capital, and unit economics that improve with scale,” Emma Norchet from T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. said in a statement. “Truly unique characteristics for a company before it reaches the public markets.”
