Addison, Texas-based Firehawk Defense has closed an oversubscribed Series D topping $150M at a valuation above $1.4B, lifting a seven-year-old propulsion manufacturer into unicorn territory.
Advent International and Rochefort Asset Management, the fund co-founded by Dallas investor Kyle Bass, co-led the round. Firehawk said the deal was upsized from an initial $100M target, with new and existing backers and strategic partners joining.
The pitch is manufacturing speed. Standard solid rocket motors are built by pouring liquid propellant into molds and curing them for days or weeks. Firehawk instead uses a thermoplastic process that takes hours, producing material it can store and later mold, extrude or 3D-print into artillery and rocket motor grains.
Capital goes to volume. Firehawk runs a 320-acre propellant plant in Lawton, Oklahoma, and a missile integration site in Crawford, Mississippi, where it plans to lift Hydra-70 output from 40,000 to 120,000 rounds a year. Two West Texas sites handle research and static-fire testing. Roughly 150 people work across the five locations.
The company, formerly Firehawk Aerospace, also builds 155mm base-bleed motor modules with General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems to stretch artillery range.
Founder and CEO Will Edwards frames the raise as industrial rather than experimental, saying the money converts a manufacturing breakthrough into production capacity. Firehawk expects to rank as the largest US artillery motor producer, and third-largest propellant supplier, by the end of 2027.
That ambition rides a wider push to rebuild Western solid rocket motor supply. Legacy production is concentrated among a handful of contractors using slow batch methods, a vulnerability exposed by sustained munitions demand in Ukraine and the Middle East. For venture investors, it is a rare case of defense hardware scaling on manufacturing economics rather than software margins.
