Torrance and El Segundo Startups Raised $2.37 Billion. The New Factories Aren't Built Yet.

Hadrian, in Torrance, closed a $1.37 billion Series D at a $7.87 billion valuation. Valar Atomics, in El Segundo, closed $1 billion led by Sequoia Capital, dot.LA reported on August 7, 2026.

Two Los Angeles County startups raised a combined $2.37 billion in equity in a single week to build the physical layer underneath artificial intelligence. Hadrian, a manufacturer in Torrance, took $1.37 billion, and Valar Atomics, a reactor company in El Segundo, closed $1 billion, dot.LA reported on August 7, 2026. Neither company's headcount, nor the square footage or street address of any new plant, appears in that account.

Here's what that means for the South Bay: two large checks landed for buildings and production lines that mostly don't exist yet. The money is announced. The hiring, the leases and the first production runs are the part still to come.

Hadrian: $1.37 billion, and a $7.87 billion valuation

Hadrian's Series D values the company at $7.87 billion, per dot.LA. The company told the outlet it will spend the money opening new factories, expanding research and development, and raising its capacity to make defense, aerospace and industrial systems. Its plants pair skilled workers with automation, robotics and its own software to produce precision components and, increasingly, whole systems. Customers include Lockheed Martin, RTX and Anduril, the outlet reported.

The comparison worth holding onto is the last one: Hadrian raised $260 million a little over a year earlier. dot.LA read the jump as a sign that "reindustrialization" has stopped being a pitch-deck word and started being a billion-dollar thesis. What the outlet doesn't say is where the new factories go, or when.

Valar Atomics: $1 billion, plus a $200 million credit line

About 15 miles up the coast in El Segundo, Valar Atomics closed a $1 billion Series B led by Sequoia Capital and added a $200 million credit facility, dot.LA reported. The company reportedly reached a $6 billion valuation. That's up from an earlier report, cited by the same outlet, of a $450 million raise at $2 billion.

Valar is building standardized nuclear plants meant to be produced in a factory rather than poured on site over a decade or more. It has something to point at. In June 2026, its Ward 250 reactor sustained a nuclear reaction, and a week after that the company demonstrated the reactor generating electricity to run an Nvidia Blackwell system, according to dot.LA. The company says the new money takes it from proving the technology to making reactors at volume.

Announced versus standing

Announced in the first week of August: $2.37 billion across two rounds. Delivered so far, on this record: one reactor that ran and powered a computer, and a manufacturing business with existing customers. Everything else — the additional factories, the fleet of reactors, the jobs those imply — is a plan with funding behind it, and dot.LA's account gives no completion dates for any of it.

That's not a small distinction in a county where aerospace tilt-ups change hands faster than they change use. A permit, a lease or a hiring notice would tell Angelenos more about what $2.37 billion buys here than a valuation does. None of those are on the public record in this reporting yet.

Source: dot.la, retrieved September 2, 2026.