Founder
Castelion
Castelion develops and manufactures affordable, mass-producible hypersonic strike weapons for the U.S. military, with its first missile, Blackbeard, designed from inception for industrial-rate output and rapid flight-test iteration. The company vertically integrates core technologies—including solid rocket motors, avionics, and thermal protection materials—to compress design-to-launch cycles from years to months and enable high-volume production at commercial unit costs.
- Aerospace
- Defense Tech
- Hardware
Updated 2 months ago
Funding
Raised to date
$1.2BRaised to date based on public sources. This may differ from the amount the company actually raised and is based only on what is publicly available on the internet.
across 4 rounds
+15$800M · Series C
Announced Aug 2026 · from article date
Disclosed cumulative: $1.2B
4/4
RoundDateAmountValuationInvestors
Founders
Product
Problem
The United States and its allies face a diminishing combat power advantage as adversaries like China expand their military capabilities, including hypersonic missiles and large-scale firepower. Existing defense development and production models are too slow and expensive to deliver the quantities of long-range strike weapons needed for credible deterrence, leaving the U.S. vulnerable to coercion and aggression.
Solution
Castelion builds affordable, mass-producible hypersonic long-range strike weapons designed for scaled manufacturing and rapid deployment. The company vertically integrates core technologies—including solid rocket motors, missile avionics, and thermal protection materials—to control cost, schedule, and quality. By designing for manufacturability from day one and using rapid iterative test cycles, Castelion compresses design-to-launch timelines from years to months. Its first weapon, Blackbeard, is engineered for industrial-rate output and has progressed from clean sheet to program of record in under four years, with fielding targeted for 2027.
Target Audience
Primary customers are U.S. military branches—including the Navy, Air Force, and Army—along with allied defense organizations seeking affordable, high-volume hypersonic strike and defensive capabilities.
Features
- Vertically integrated production of solid rocket motors, control actuation systems, flight computers, seekers, thermal protection materials, and mission software
- Design-for-manufacturability approach enabling high-volume output at commercial unit costs, with capacity for thousands of missiles per year
- Rapid iterative flight-test cadence, with more than 20 development flight tests conducted in 2025 alone
- 1,000-acre Project Ranger campus in New Mexico, the largest dedicated hypersonic missile manufacturing facility in the nation
- Parallel development of a longer-range strike system and defensive systems leveraging shared low-cost subsystem infrastructure
- Active contracts with the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Army, with integration into operational launch platforms underway