AI Factory Startup Hadrian Denies Reported $1 Billion Funding Round

Hadrian Automation, a defense manufacturing startup that speeds up production with artificial intelligence-powered factories, has denied a report that it is discussing a new funding round that would see it raise $1 billion at a valuation of $7.5 billion.

Bloomberg reported these figures Tuesday (June 23), citing unnamed sources, and added that a Hadrian spokesperson said the information is “inaccurate” and declined to say more.

The reported valuation would more than quadruple the $1.6 billion valuation the company achieved after receiving funding in January, according to the report.

Hadrian was founded in 2020 to use AI to accelerate manufacturing in aerospace, defense and other sectors. The company operates four factories in the United States, including one in Cherokee, Alabama, that opened in March and manufactures submarine parts for the U.S. Navy, per the report.

When Hadrian raised $260 million in Series C financing in July 2025, the company said that over the previous year, it had achieved 10x year-over-year growth and established itself as the company that can build AI-driven factories that can produce goods such as flight hardware and frontier technology.

“America cannot afford to lose another generation of industrial capacity,” Hadrian Founder and CEO Chris Power said at the time in a press release. “We’re building the factories that will secure American leadership in advanced manufacturing and create new jobs here in the United States.”

PYMNTS reported Tuesday that a combination of collaborative robotics, AI-driven optimization and sophisticated safety systems is creating conditions that make domestic manufacturing more competitive than it has been in decades.

In February, PYMNTS reported that robots on factory floors made up one of the categories in which investors are backing AI embedded in real operations. The report cited the example of Apptronik, which closed more than $935 million in Series A funding, including a $520 million extension, to scale its humanoid robot for commercial deployments across manufacturing and logistics.

On June 12, it was reported that AI startup Prometheus, which launched in November and is developing AI tools to help engineers design and manufacture physical products, raised $12 billion in a Series B funding round that valued the company at $41 billion.