Ursa Major just lit up the defense and space lanes with a move that feels less like a funding round and more like a pressure wave. A fresh $100M Series E, paired with $50M in debt, dropped into the ecosystem like a reminder that propulsion is still the beating heart of national power. Eclipse returned to lead the round, with Woodline Partners, Principia Growth, XN, and Alsop Louie Partners stepping back into the arena because the signals coming out of Berthoud are too strong to ignore. You do not see that kind of capital alignment unless a company is proving, quarter after quarter, that it can deliver hardware at a pace that turns legacy suppliers into historians. Ursa Major pulled in more than $115M in bookings through Q3, which is why investors now treat the company like a strategic asset.
The leadership roster reads like a greatest hits album built by people who have done the work. Founder and Chairman Joe Laurienti turned a USC engineering degree and time at SpaceX and Blue Origin into a propulsion company that never tried to be everything, just focused on doing the hardest thing exceptionally well. CEO Dan Jablonsky brings the steadiness of someone who has navigated multi B exits. CTO Brad Appel refines a liquid engine lineup that delivers real thrust, not PowerPoint dreams. COO Nick Doucette runs production with the precision of someone who has lived inside propulsion lines that scale. CFO Bill Nash is building the financial backbone for a company shifting from startup speed to industrial output. CPO Christopher Spagnoletti is threading hypersonics, in space mobility and SRMs into a product architecture that actually tracks.
The traction is impossible to miss. 100+ flight-ready engines delivered. 100,000+ seconds of hot fire testing. 450+ SRM static fires. Four SRM flight tests across 2.75 to 10 inch grain sizes. Successful Hadley flights with Stratolaunch, including sustained hypersonic runs that showed the engine can take a beating and keep its rhythm. A new 400 acre SRM test and qualification site coming online in Weld County to give the U.S. badly needed propulsion capacity. This is not a prototype shop. This is a propulsion factory built for real world conflict timelines.
This round gives Ursa Major the push to accelerate everything already working. Higher rate Hadley production. Ripley inching toward operational readiness. Draper engines racing toward hypersonic defense deployment. Lynx SRMs offering a modular, additively manufactured answer to the tactical missile bottleneck. If you build missiles, launch vehicles or anything that needs to leave the ground with authority, pay attention. Ursa Major is showing that American propulsion can be fast, scalable and unapologetically inventive, and the next wave is already forming.
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