Two L.A. Startups Raised $2.37 Billion for AI. Neither Sells AI.

Torrance's Hadrian took $1.37 billion; El Segundo's Valar Atomics closed $1 billion led by Sequoia Capital, plus a $200 million credit line.

Two Los Angeles County startups closed equity rounds worth a combined $2.37 billion, and neither one sells artificial intelligence. Torrance-based Hadrian raised $1.37 billion in a Series D, and El Segundo's Valar Atomics closed a $1 billion Series B led by Sequoia Capital, the Los Angeles tech newsletter dot.LA reported on August 7, 2026.

The two sit about 15 miles apart in the county's aerospace corridor, and the work they're raising against needs a floor, a payroll and a landlord. Hadrian's pitch is factories where machinists work alongside robotics and the company's own software, cutting precision parts and, increasingly, whole systems; its customers include Lockheed Martin, RTX and Anduril, the outlet reported.

Hadrian's round set its valuation at $7.87 billion. The company said the capital pays for additional factories, a bigger research budget and more capacity in defense, aerospace and industrial hardware.

Valar's deal came in two pieces: the $1 billion equity round and a separate $200 million credit facility. dot.LA put the company's valuation at a reported $6 billion, carried as a report rather than a company figure, and the same outlet had earlier described Valar as raising $450 million at a $2 billion valuation.

What Valar is building is a reactor meant to come off an assembly line instead of a construction site, which is the whole argument for skipping the decade-long build and the cost overruns that come with it. In June, its Ward 250 reactor reached a self-sustaining reaction, and a week later the company showed the reactor running electricity into an Nvidia Blackwell system, per dot.LA. Valar says the new money takes it from proving the thing works to making them in quantity.

Both are betting on hardware AI can't produce for itself.

Terms on the rest are thin. Lead investor on the Hadrian round: not disclosed. A date for Valar's first production reactor: not announced. How much of the $2.37 billion lands inside Los Angeles County isn't public.

For people who work in this town, the number to watch isn't the valuation. It's Hadrian's last round: $260 million, just over a year earlier, against $1.37 billion now — more than five times the check for the same argument about American manufacturing.

Source: dot.la, retrieved September 16, 2026.