{ "apiVersion": 1, "source": "https://www.ventureatlas.org", "license": "Data is curated by Venture Atlas; every field carries its own source URL.", "endpoint": "/api/companies", "lastDataUpdate": "2026-09-12", "count": 114, "companies": [ { "slug": "aalo-atomics", "name": "Aalo Atomics", "summary": "Aalo Atomics is an Austin-based nuclear startup founded in 2023 by CEO Matt Loszak and CTO Yasir Arafat (former lead of INL's MARVEL microreactor) to mass-manufacture sodium-cooled reactors purpose-built for AI data centers. Its product line pairs the factory-built 10 MWe Aalo-1 reactor with the Aalo Pod, a 50 MWe plant of five reactors and shared turbines designed to install in months. Selected for the DOE's Reactor Pilot Program in August 2025, Aalo brought its Aalo-X Critical Test Reactor at Idaho National Laboratory to first criticality on July 4, 2026 - the fourth DOE-authorized advanced reactor to meet Executive Order 14301's deadline, less than eight months after groundbreaking. The company says it has grown from 2 people to about 200 and has raised over $300 million, including a $100M Series B led by Valor Equity Partners; a roughly $500M Series C at a $4-5B valuation was still being shopped as of September 2026, with no close announced. Its 40,000 sq ft Austin pilot plant is slated to expand tenfold to 400,000 sq ft, with a longer-term one-million-square-foot Gigawatt Factory now described on the company site as ramping in 2030. On July 30, 2026 Aalo named cloud provider Crusoe as the partner for a 2027 INL proof-of-concept pairing a 50 MWe Aalo Pod with a Crusoe Spark modular data center, targeting commercial nuclear-powered AI deployments by the end of 2029. Aalo's own public timeline now puts first power from the integrated Aalo-X plant in Q1 2027 and the NRC application for the first commercial Aalo Pod in 2027 (slipped from a 2026 COLA target), with a long-term cost goal of 3 cents/kWh.", "summarySource": "https://www.aalo.com", "status": "Active", "founded": 2023, "headquarters": "Austin, Texas", "country": "USA", "ceo": "Matt Loszak", "website": "https://www.aalo.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/aalo-atomics.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fission", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fission", "name": "Nuclear Fission", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fission" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 2, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/aalo-atomics", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/aalo-atomics" }, { "slug": "airbus", "name": "Airbus", "summary": "Airbus is Europe's largest aerospace company, spanning commercial aircraft, helicopters, defence and space. In civil aviation it remains Boeing's only true peer at global scale and is pairing near-term production growth with longer-term work on lower-carbon aircraft technologies, future single-aisle designs and hydrogen propulsion. The company combines a mature global airliner business with broader aerospace capabilities across defence, space and rotorcraft. Q1 2026 was unusually weak - 114 deliveries (vs. 136 a year earlier), revenue down 7% to EUR 12.65B and adjusted EBIT halved to EUR 300M due to Pratt & Whitney engine shortages and Chinese delivery disruptions - but Airbus reaffirmed full-year 2026 guidance of ~870 deliveries, EUR 7.5B adjusted EBIT and EUR 4.5B free cash flow, with a record commercial backlog above 9,000 aircraft. Output recovered strongly through mid-year: official figures reported July 10 showed 351 deliveries in H1 2026 (up ~15% YoY), Airbus's best first half since 2019, and the backlog stood at 9,216 aircraft at end-June. At a measured Farnborough Airshow (July 20-24, 2026) Airbus booked roughly 157 firm commercial orders plus commitments (of a show-wide $84.7B / 353 firm aircraft), headlined by SMBC Aviation Capital's 100 A320neo-family jets, VietJet's 20 A330neos (~$7.4B), and new A350-1000 orders from Riyadh Air and Philippine Airlines, with CEO Guillaume Faury reaffirming the ~870-delivery full-year target. On July 26 Airbus announced a EUR 5B share buyback and raised medium-term targets, and on July 29 it reported H1 2026 results: revenue up 12% YoY to EUR 33.2B on 351 deliveries, powered by a record Q2 (237 deliveries, +39% YoY). Airbus's official July tally, published August 7, showed the delivery pace cooling further to 67 aircraft (39 customers) and 204 gross orders, taking YTD deliveries to 418 versus 373 at the same point in 2025 - still 51 aircraft ahead of Boeing (367 YTD) but below the roughly 85-90/month cadence needed to reach the 870-aircraft target. The August monthly bulletin, reported September 7, showed 57 deliveries and 67 gross orders, taking YTD deliveries to 475, up 9% from 434 a year earlier and 57 jets ahead of Boeing's 418. Hitting 870 still requires about 99 aircraft a month over September-December. Part of the August softness traces to a production quality issue on the A330neo: Airbus found a stray tool and other quality lapses on the horizontal tail plane (assembled at its Getafe plant) that nearly halted A330neo deliveries for three months - zero handed over in June and July, just one in August, to Starlux Airlines - before Airbus said in early September the root cause was identified, the issue was isolated and unrelated to the Spain labor dispute, and deliveries had resumed. Two other supply and schedule risks continue to shadow the ramp: Airbus's dispute with Pratt & Whitney over shorted A320neo engine deliveries has hardened into a formal damages claim that could go to arbitration, and the A350F freighter has now penciled in a tentative first-flight date around September 24, 2026 (reports August 19-20), with first delivery still targeted for the second half of 2027 - a tight but so-far-unrevised schedule given typical 12-15 month flight-test campaigns. Airbus also confirmed two divisional leadership changes already in effect this year (Lars Wagner as Commercial Aircraft CEO since January, Matthieu Louvot as Airbus Helicopters CEO since April) and a board chair transition, with Amparo Moraleda succeeding Rene Obermann on October 1, 2026. Thousands of Airbus workers in Spain resumed an indefinite strike the week of August 24 after rejecting a pay offer; on August 31 workers voted 81% to keep striking rather than suspend it, and on September 1 SIMA-mediated talks with the three unions leading the walkout (CGT, UGT, UTIL) broke down without agreement. On September 4, 2026, Airbus said it and unions UGT, ATP, CCOO and SIPA, representing about 88% of union representatives, had reached a Ministry of Industry-mediated proposal of understanding to put to a binding referendum of Airbus Spain employees in September; UGT later said it had not signed a pre-agreement and would debate the proposal in assembly before any vote. On September 8 workers voted 51.23% to 48.77% to keep the indefinite strike, a 67-vote margin; on September 9 the strike committee paused pickets but kept the call in force. On the defense side, Airbus also picked up two notable wins in mid-to-late August: a $115 million U.S. Army contract (option for two more) for 10 UH-72B Lakota helicopters announced August 14, and a EUR 5.4 billion (~$6.3B) Spain-Poland framework agreement approved by Spain's Council of Ministers on August 25 for the joint procurement of seven A330 MRTT tankers (three for Spain, four for Poland) under the EU's SAFE instrument, to be assembled at Airbus's Getafe site with Polish deliveries targeted by 2030 and definitive contracts still to be negotiated. Airbus's stock has held up despite the noise, with a market cap of roughly $190B in mid-August 2026. Separately, on August 29, 2026 the Financial Times reported that Airbus is reviewing its US small-satellite manufacturing business at Merritt Island, Florida (more than 200 staff and several hundred million dollars in annual revenue), with a sale among the options; Airbus confirmed the review and said it is separate from its planned European space combination with Leonardo and Thales. The same week as the Vietnam paper deals, Airbus Defence and Space booked a cluster of European space and drone awards at the Paris International Space Summit: an authorization to proceed from Eutelsat for 229 more OneWeb satellites (bringing Airbus's new OneWeb build to 669), the start of IRIS2 first-layer work (at least 66 LEO satellites for delivery in 2029), the DGA's CASSIOPÉE SIGINT-satellite award with Unseenlabs to succeed CERES by 2032, and a French armed-forces follow-on for four U050 Capa-X drone systems (eight aircraft) for 2027 delivery. On September 11 Airbus also began a limited open-market buyback of up to 4.1 million shares through November 6 to fund employee share plans, separate from the EUR 5B programme announced in July.", "summarySource": "https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/airbus-aircraft-deliveries-end-august-rose-9-2026-09-07/", "status": "Public (EPA: AIR)", "founded": 1970, "headquarters": "Leiden, Netherlands / Toulouse, France", "country": "EU", "ceo": "Guillaume Faury", "website": "https://www.airbus.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/airbus.png", "industrySlugs": [ "civilian-aircrafts", "defense", "space-stations", "evtol", "satellite-mega-constellations" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "civilian-aircrafts", "name": "Civilian Aircrafts", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/civilian-aircrafts" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "space-stations", "name": "Space Stations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/space-stations" }, { "slug": "evtol", "name": "eVTOL", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/evtol" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 11, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/airbus", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/airbus" }, { "slug": "amazon-leo", "name": "Amazon Leo", "summary": "Amazon Leo - Amazon's satellite division, launched as Project Kuiper in 2019 and rebranded November 13, 2025 - is a low Earth orbit broadband network for customers and communities beyond the reach of existing terrestrial infrastructure. Led by VP Rajeev Badyal from Redmond, Washington, it combines thousands of satellites built at a Kirkland factory (up to five per day), a global ground network integrated with AWS, and a three-terminal hardware lineup: Leo Nano, Leo Pro, and Leo Ultra. The enterprise beta went live April 8, 2026 with partners including Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, JetBlue, and NASA; after ULA's final Atlas V flight (LA-08) on July 2, 2026, about 396 production satellites are in orbit and Amazon says it has enough capacity to open commercial service in late 2026, though it is still waiting for satellites to reach assigned ~600 km operating orbits. On September 9, 2026 AT&T Business said it is the first major U.S. telecom to fold Amazon Leo into a single managed architecture with its fiber and 5G networks for enterprise and public-sector customers, with pricing and availability still to come after a phased reliability deployment. The FCC granted a waiver June 5, 2026 for missing the July 30 50%-deployment milestone (1,618 of 3,236 satellites), imposing a temporary spectrum-priority reduction on post-July-30 satellites until March 2028. With Vulcan Centaur and New Glenn still grounded, Amazon on September 9, 2026 ordered six more Ariane 64 launches from Arianespace - taking that contract from 18 to 24 missions, with the new flights starting in 2029 and running through 2031. The $11.57B Globalstar acquisition (expected to close 2027) adds direct-to-device capability, Delta signed for a 500-aircraft Wi-Fi rollout beginning 2028, and a July 2026 deal makes South Africa's Herotel the first African ISP to distribute Leo residential service ('evry, powered by Amazon Leo', launching 2027).", "summarySource": "https://csimagazine.com/csi/ATT-Business-adds-Amazon-Leo-satellite-connectivity.php", "status": "Active", "founded": 2019, "headquarters": "Redmond, Washington", "country": "US", "ceo": "Rajeev Badyal (VP, Amazon Leo)", "website": "https://leo.amazon.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/amazon-leo.png", "industrySlugs": [ "satellite-mega-constellations", "telecommunications", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": { "name": "Amazon", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "division", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Leo" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/amazon-leo", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/amazon-leo" }, { "slug": "anduril", "name": "Anduril Industries", "summary": "Anduril Industries is an American defense technology company founded in 2017 by Oculus creator Palmer Luckey with Palantir veterans Brian Schimpf (CEO), Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm, and Joe Chen. Its core thesis is to build software-defined, mass-producible autonomous weapons around Lattice, an AI command-and-control platform that fuses sensor data and orchestrates fleets of unmanned systems. Its hardware now spans every domain: the Fury (FQ-44A) collaborative combat aircraft, Ghost and Bolt drones, Altius loitering munitions, Roadrunner reusable jet interceptors, Barracuda cruise missiles, Ghost Shark autonomous submarines, a new class of autonomous surface vessels built with South Korea's HD Hyundai, and the EagleEye mixed-reality soldier headset built with Meta. Anduril holds prime positions on several of the Pentagon's most-watched programs: the Air Force ordered its FQ-44A into production in June 2026 alongside General Atomics' FQ-42A, targeting at least 150 CCAs by the end of the decade, with a mission-autonomy software down-select still to come; it took over Microsoft's $22B IVAS soldier-headset program in 2025 (now SBMC) and is running a second prototype cycle after its Phase 2 hardware redesign, with an Army downselect and production decision potentially landing in fiscal 2028; it won a 10-year, $20B Army enterprise agreement for Lattice-based counter-drone command and control in March 2026; in August 2026 it demonstrated a Lattice-powered Battle Manager for the Guam Defense System at Exercise Valiant Shield, fusing Army, Air Force, Navy and Missile Defense Agency assets; and it leads an industry team prototyping Golden Dome space-based interceptors, which cleared the program's first design-review gate in August 2026. On September 9, 2026 the Army selected a Boeing-Anduril team to advance in the Indirect Fire Protection Capability Increment 2 second-interceptor competition, pairing a Boeing seeker and airframe with an Anduril solid rocket motor from the company's Mississippi Solid Rocket Motor Complex. In August 2026 the Department of Homeland Security also awarded Anduril a Track 2 slot on a $1.5B, five-year counter-UAS IDIQ. After Anduril protested its exclusion from the Track 1 hardware award, DHS agreed to re-evaluate that proposal and GAO dismissed the protest on September 4, 2026. International business is scaling too, led by Australia's A$1.7B Ghost Shark program, completed Altius-600M deliveries to Taiwan plus an August 2026 NT$26.9 billion (~$847 million) letter of offer and acceptance for 2,032 more Altius systems (1,554 Altius-700M loitering munitions and 478 Altius-600ISR, first deliveries in Q4 2026), a State Department-approved (not yet finalized) possible $1.98B Kuwait counter-drone Foreign Military Sale, and a July 2026 agreement for Poland's state defense group PGZ to build the surface-launched Barracuda-500M cruise missile locally - Anduril's first European production site - alongside a September 2026 pitch at MSPO Kielce to sell Fury and Thunder to Poland as loyal wingmen for its incoming F-35 and Apache fleets, and an Embraer MoU to launch palletized Barracuda-500Ms from the C-390. Manufacturing is anchored by Arsenal-1, a $1B, 5-million-square-foot Ohio factory where the first Ohio-built Fury rolled off the line on July 27, 2026, months ahead of schedule, with Roadrunner, Barracuda, and a classified platform slated to join the line by year-end. Revenue roughly doubled in 2025 to $2.2B (2026 guidance points to roughly $4.3B), and the company raised a $5B Series H at a $61B valuation in May 2026, bringing total funding above $11B; reports since late July 2026 of a further round at roughly a $100B valuation remain unconfirmed and had not closed as of September 10, 2026. With around 7,000 employees, Anduril is the most richly valued private defense-tech company; CEO Brian Schimpf said in July 2026 the company is in no rush to IPO.", "summarySource": "https://www.anduril.com/news/boeing-and-anduril-s-midrange-interceptor-advances-in-u-s-army-competition", "status": "Private", "founded": 2017, "headquarters": "Costa Mesa, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Brian Schimpf", "website": "https://www.anduril.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/anduril.png", "industrySlugs": [ "defense", "military-drones", "autonomous-systems", "orbital-economy", "missile-defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 16, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/anduril", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/anduril" }, { "slug": "anthropic", "name": "Anthropic", "summary": "Anthropic is a San Francisco AI-safety and research company, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers led by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, that develops the Claude family of large language models. As of mid-August 2026 its lineup spans Claude Haiku 4.5, Claude Sonnet 5, the everyday-default Claude Opus 5 (which replaced Opus 4.8 on July 24), and its most capable widely released model, Claude Fable 5 (plus the invitation-only Claude Mythos 5). Claude reaches customers through the claude.ai apps, the Claude API, enterprise and government plans, and Claude Code - its agentic coding tool, which runs at a $2.5B+ run-rate with 2M+ weekly active users - alongside the Claude Cowork 'AI coworker' and the June 2026 Claude Science research workbench, built on the ~$400M acqui-hire of ex-Genentech drug-discovery startup Coefficient Bio, that positions Anthropic in AI-driven pharma R&D. Anthropic differentiates on safety and interpretability research and runs one of the industry's largest multi-vendor compute footprints spanning Amazon (Project Rainier; Amazon's committed capital reached $33B in April 2026), Google (TPUs, up to $40B plus a 3.5 GW Broadcom-built expansion), AMD, CoreWeave, and newer data-center leases with TeraWulf, Riot Platforms and Volta Infra - and was reported on August 13, 2026 to be in talks to acquire AI-infrastructure startup Decart for roughly $6B. Annualized run-rate revenue topped $65B as of late July 2026 (up from ~$47B in May and ~$9B at the end of 2025; some IPO investors are modeling $100-120B by year-end), more than 1,000 customers now spend over $1M/year, and preliminary Q2 2026 revenue exceeded $11.5B with its first profitable quarter since founding. In May 2026 it raised a $65B Series H at a $965B valuation (secondary markets have since priced it above $1T-$1.2T) and confidentially filed for an IPO in June 2026; CFO Krishna Rao is now holding early investor meetings for a possible fall listing that some backers are modeling near a $2T valuation, though Anthropic itself has not set a target. On August 27, 2026 a San Francisco federal judge (Rita Lin) ruled the Pentagon's supply-chain-risk designation of Anthropic unlawful as First Amendment retaliation and arbitrary and capricious, writing that the measures were illegal and baseless; a separate D.C. Circuit case over a second designation remains pending, and the government is expected to appeal. The same day Anthropic opened a research preview of the Model Hardware Standard (MHS), a model-agnostic specification started with HHMI Janelia that lets AI agents operate lab and manufacturing hardware such as microscopes, liquid handlers and robotic arms, with a plan to open-source the standard after the preview.", "summarySource": "https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-hardware-standard-research-preview", "status": "Private (public benefit corporation; confidentially filed for IPO)", "founded": 2021, "headquarters": "San Francisco, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Dario Amodei", "website": "https://www.anthropic.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/anthropic.png", "industrySlugs": [ "artificial-intelligence", "ai-compute", "biotech", "healthcare" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" }, { "slug": "biotech", "name": "Biotech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/biotech" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 8, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/anthropic", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/anthropic" }, { "slug": "apptronik", "name": "Apptronik", "summary": "Apptronik builds Apollo, a 5 foot 8 inch, 160 pound humanoid that lifts boxes up to 55 pounds, and it is the humanoid company Google DeepMind chose as its hardware partner. Spun out of the University of Texas at Austin's Human Centered Robotics Lab in 2016 on the back of roughly 15 earlier robots including NASA's Valkyrie, it unveiled Apollo in 2023 and now has units working in designated areas inside factories and warehouses run by Mercedes-Benz, GXO Logistics, and contract manufacturer Jabil. Funding came in two waves: a $350 million Series A in February 2025 co-led by B Capital and Capital Factory with Google participating, later extended, and then a $520 million Series A-X extension on February 11, 2026 that took the Series A past $935 million and total capital to nearly $1 billion at a valuation around $5 billion. In June 2026 it unveiled Apollo 2, available in both bipedal and wheeled-base configurations, and opened Robot Park, a nearly 90,000 square foot data-collection and training facility in Austin, where the company said it then had more than 350 employees. When Google DeepMind launched Gemini Robotics 2 on July 30, 2026, the whole-body-control demonstration ran on Apollo 2 rather than on Boston Dynamics' Atlas. No later funding round or commercial-price announcement has followed. The honest state of the business is that Apollo is still in pilots: Apptronik has never published a price, and CEO Jeff Cardenas has pointed at 2027, with the commercial Apollo 3, as the year volume orders are supposed to arrive.", "summarySource": "https://apptronik.com/news-collection/welcome-to-robot-park-where-apptroniks-apollo-goes-to-work", "status": "Private", "founded": 2016, "headquarters": "Austin, Texas", "country": "US", "ceo": "Jeff Cardenas", "website": "https://apptronik.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/apptronik.png", "industrySlugs": [ "humanoid-robots", "industrial-automation", "warehouse-automation", "artificial-intelligence" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "humanoid-robots", "name": "Humanoid Robots", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/humanoid-robots" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-06", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/apptronik", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/apptronik" }, { "slug": "archer-aviation", "name": "Archer Aviation", "summary": "Archer Aviation is an electric aircraft company building Midnight, a piloted four-passenger eVTOL for short urban trips, while expanding into defense, powertrain sales, and aviation software. As of Q1 2026 Archer had passed 700 Midnight test flights, completed 70% of for-credit FAA flight-test points, and formally closed FAA Phase 3 in April 2026 - the first eVTOL company to do so - unlocking Type Inspection Authorization (TIA) and entering Phase 4 (formal compliance testing). In the UAE, the GCAA transitioned Midnight to a Restricted Type Certificate (RTC) program on May 7, 2026, targeting initial commercial certification as early as Q3 2026 - meaning Abu Dhabi is likely to see the first Midnight passenger flights before the U.S.; as of September 9, 2026 no first-passenger-flight date had been announced and the Q3 window was nearly closed. The critical remaining FAA milestone is a publicly demonstrated piloted transition flight (VTOL→forward-flight mode), which is slated for H2 2026 and had still not been publicly demonstrated as of September 9, 2026. U.S. operations are targeted for H2 2026 in Florida, New York, and Texas under the eIPP. Archer is also the named official air taxi provider of the 2028 LA Olympics. On July 15, 2026, Archer unveiled Zee, an aviation-specific AI foundation model trained on ADS-B, air-traffic, and flight data, extending its ambitions beyond air taxis into aviation software. On July 20, 2026 at the Farnborough Airshow, Archer and Anduril unveiled a jointly-developed autonomous, series hybrid-electric tilt-rotor VTOL platform - a defense variant, Anduril's Group 5 'Thunder' attack rotorcraft, and Archer's commercial 'Halo' variant - sending Archer shares up about 20%. On August 3, 2026, Korean Air - which agreed in October 2025 to become Archer's exclusive commercialization partner in South Korea for up to 100 Midnight aircraft - said it will lead conversion and systems integration of a militarized Midnight variant for South Korea's Advanced Air Mobility defense program, extending Archer's defense ambitions into an international export partnership. On August 10, 2026 Archer reported Q2 2026 revenue of $5M (up 213% sequentially, beating estimates) but a wider-than-expected GAAP loss of $0.34/share on a one-time litigation settlement; Adjusted EBITDA loss was $177M and total liquidity fell to about $1.6B, and the company held Q3 2026 Adjusted EBITDA guidance at a loss of $170-200M. Archer also disclosed that during the quarter the FAA approved its quality management system, enabling FAA-creditable conformity findings across the aircraft, its components, and systems - Archer says this makes it the only eVTOL OEM in Phase 4 of type certification with an accepted means of compliance, on top of more than 150 piloted Midnight test flights completed (some exceeding 50 miles). The same day, Archer announced a deal to acquire Boeing's Wisk Aero, Insitu and SkyGrid businesses in exchange for a Boeing equity stake of up to 19.75%, a transaction still subject to Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust review and expected to close by year-end 2026. On September 4, 2026 Midnight completed the first stop of Archer's 'No Roads' city-to-city flight tour, a piloted Salinas-Hollister round trip (about 12 minutes and 125 mph each way), with further Northern California, Los Angeles, Texas and Florida legs planned.", "summarySource": "https://investors.archer.com/news/news-details/2026/Archers-No-Roads-Tour-Takes-Off-By-Completing-Midnights-Piloted-Roundtrip-Flight-From-Salinas-to-Hollister/default.aspx", "status": "Public (NYSE: ACHR)", "founded": 2018, "headquarters": "San Jose, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Adam Goldstein", "website": "https://www.archer.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/archer-aviation.png", "industrySlugs": [ "evtol", "civilian-aircrafts", "defense", "artificial-intelligence" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "evtol", "name": "eVTOL", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/evtol" }, { "slug": "civilian-aircrafts", "name": "Civilian Aircrafts", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/civilian-aircrafts" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/archer-aviation", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/archer-aviation" }, { "slug": "aridge", "name": "Aridge", "summary": "Aridge - known as XPeng AeroHT until an October 2025 rebrand - is the Guangzhou-based flying-car affiliate of EV maker XPeng, majority-owned by XPeng and its CEO He Xiaopeng. Its flagship Land Aircraft Carrier pairs a six-wheel hybrid van with a detachable two-seat eVTOL air module that the van stores, recharges, and auto-launches. The company has taken 7,000+ pre-orders at under RMB 2M apiece (including a 600-unit Middle East bulk order), completed the world's first flying-car mass-production factory in Guangzhou (first module off the line November 2025, initial ramp about 5,000 units/year scaling to a 10,000-unit design capacity), and has raised roughly $1B in equity. At IFA Berlin in September 2026 XPeng showed the Land Aircraft Carrier publicly in Europe for the first time; a spokesperson reaffirmed mass production in the second half of 2026 but said CAAC approval and end-customer deliveries are now expected in 2027, slipping the earlier late-2026 handover target. A confidential Hong Kong IPO remains filed (January 2026, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley). A six-seat hybrid tiltrotor, the A868, is in flight testing.", "summarySource": "https://www.heise.de/en/news/Mobile-aircraft-carrier-AeroHT-goes-into-mass-production-11440565.html", "status": "Private (XPeng affiliate; HK IPO filed)", "founded": 2013, "headquarters": "Guangzhou, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Zhao Deli (founder & president)", "website": "https://www.aridge.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/aridge.png", "industrySlugs": [ "evtol", "electric-vehicles" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "evtol", "name": "eVTOL", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/evtol" }, { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" } ], "parent": { "name": "XPeng Inc.", "companySlug": "xpeng", "relationship": "affiliate", "source": "https://cnevpost.com/2026/03/13/xpeng-flying-car-unit-aridge-secures-200-million/" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 3, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-07", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/aridge", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/aridge" }, { "slug": "asml", "name": "ASML", "summary": "ASML, founded in 1984 as a Philips/ASM International joint venture that built its first machine in a shed in Eindhoven, is the world's dominant supplier of photolithography systems (~83% of the market) and the only company on Earth that makes EUV machines - the $180M-$400M tools without which no leading-edge chip can be manufactured. That monopoly has made the Veldhoven company one of Europe's most valuable tech firms (about $674B as of September 5, 2026, after a mid-year China-competition scare took it down from a ~$693B July peak). 2025 revenue reached €32.7B with a record €13.2B in Q4 bookings and a €38.8B year-end backlog (ASML has since stopped disclosing quarterly bookings), and after twice raising 2026 guidance during the year - most recently at Q2 2026 to €43-45B - CEO Christophe Fouquet says chip demand is outpacing supply, with 65 low-NA EUV systems planned for 2026, rising toward 80-85 in 2027. The next act is High-NA EUV: the first EXE:5000 shipped to Intel in December 2023, the production-grade EXE:5200B arrived at Intel in Q4 2025 for its 14A node (risk production still targeted 2027), and on July 15, 2026 Intel became the first company to ship a high-volume commercial product patterned with High-NA EUV - select layers of its Panther Lake (Core Ultra Series 3, 18A) chips are now dual-qualified for either 0.33 NA or 0.55 NA scanners. Samsung, SK hynix and imec also hold early High-NA systems - 10 EXE tools were running at four customers as of Semicon Taiwan 2026, with three more shipping, at roughly $380M each. On September 8, 2026 TSMC said it intends to use High-NA in high-volume manufacturing for advanced nodes from 2030 and joined ASML in an industry push to 12-inch High-NA photomasks (pilot line 2031, production-ready 2033); CNBC reported Samsung plans High-NA for DRAM from 2028. ASML also made an uncharacteristic strategic bet in September 2025, investing €1.3B to become the largest shareholder (~11%) of French AI lab Mistral AI. The main headwind is geopolitics: China was 33% of 2025 sales and held at roughly 20% of net sales through Q2 2026 under expanding US and Dutch export controls; a July 27, 2026 report that a state-linked Chinese entity has begun mass-producing a domestic immersion DUV tool (assessed as roughly equivalent to ASML's ~2008-era NXT:1950i, 15-18 years behind ASML's current platform) briefly knocked ASML shares down as much as 8%. Separately, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told senior ASML executives in a series of meetings beginning in April 2026 that Washington believes an EUV system or EUV-specific components may have reached China in breach of export controls - a claim ASML has categorically denied, backing its denial with an accounting of all 314 operational and 26 decommissioned EUV units worldwide by location; no formal enforcement action had been announced as of ASML's July 15, 2026 earnings call.", "summarySource": "https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/tsmc-and-asml-announce-industry-transition-to-large-format-photomasks-for-high-na-euv", "status": "Public", "founded": 1984, "headquarters": "Veldhoven, Netherlands", "country": "NL", "ceo": "Christophe Fouquet", "website": "https://www.asml.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/asml.png", "industrySlugs": [ "semiconductors" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "semiconductors", "name": "Semiconductors", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/semiconductors" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 11, "trackRecord": { "hit": 3, "slipped": 0, "missed": 1, "total": 4 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/asml", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/asml" }, { "slug": "ast-spacemobile", "name": "AST SpaceMobile", "summary": "AST SpaceMobile is building a direct-to-cell satellite network designed to connect standard smartphones to space-based 4G and 5G service without special hardware. After proving the concept with BlueWalker 3 and launching BlueBird 1-6, the company reached 13 satellites in orbit on August 5, 2026 with the successful launch of BlueBird 11, 12 and 13, following the June 17, 2026 launch of BlueBird 8, 9 and 10. The company counts nearly 60 mobile-network-operator partners covering more than 3 billion subscribers and reported its first meaningful revenue from gateway deliveries, MNO milestones, and government work. In April 2026 the FCC granted AST commercial Supplemental Coverage from Space authority for a constellation of up to 248 satellites - its first U.S. operating license for direct-to-device service - and on August 4, 2026 AST told the FCC it had begun its first commercial service outside the US, direct-to-cell in Japan with Rakuten Mobile. BlueBird 7 was lost after an April 2026 New Glenn upper-stage issue, and on July 15, 2026 AST pushed continuous US commercial service from late 2026 to early 2027 as launch-vehicle disruptions thinned its near-term access to orbit. Manufacturing is now running at up to six fully equipped satellites per month; by late August 2026 production of BlueBird 14 was complete, BlueBirds 15 and 16 were nearing completion, and the line had advanced through BlueBird 48. In early August 2026 Guinness World Records recognized its Block 2 phased array as the largest commercial communications array ever deployed in low Earth orbit. On August 6, 2026 AST said it had expanded network integration testing, subject to regulatory approvals, across eight European countries with Vodafone, Orange, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone Ukraine. At its August 10, 2026 Q2 business update, AST reported $31.5M of quarterly revenue (more than double Q1 2026) and a $230.9M GAAP net loss driven largely by a $125.9M loss on involuntary conversion tied to the BlueBird 7 de-orbit, while its contracted revenue backlog grew to about $1.3B and the company disclosed three additional U.S. government awards worth over $100M of near-term funded value across 2026-2027; full-year 2026 revenue guidance of $150M-$200M was reaffirmed, and Q3 results are not due until November. On August 11, 2026 AST told the FCC it would begin UK direct-to-cell operations with Vodafone 'imminently' under an Ofcom trial licence running through 30 September 2026. On August 14, 2026 the FCC granted a 30-day special temporary authority to test 800 MHz Supplemental Coverage from Space on up to 100 devices in Midland, Texas and Lanham, Maryland, with the window running through 12 September 2026; no public test results had been posted as of 7 September. By late August, BlueBird 12 and 13 had fully deployed their 2,400 sq ft phased arrays, and New Zealand carrier 2degrees officially opened its Marton satellite ground station on 26 August after completing voice, video and mobile-data test sessions over standard smartphones.", "summarySource": "https://www.2degrees.nz/media-release/2degrees-opens-ast-spacemobile-ground-station", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: ASTS)", "founded": 2017, "headquarters": "Midland, Texas", "country": "US", "ceo": "Abel Avellan", "website": "https://ast-science.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/ast-spacemobile.png", "industrySlugs": [ "satellite-mega-constellations", "telecommunications", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 10, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/ast-spacemobile", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/ast-spacemobile" }, { "slug": "astroscale", "name": "Astroscale", "summary": "Astroscale is the only company in the world building a business purely around servicing what is already in orbit: removing debris, deorbiting dead satellites, extending the life of working ones, refueling them, and inspecting them. Founded in Tokyo in 2013 by Nobu Okada and listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth market since June 2024 under ticker 186A, it operates across Japan, the UK, the US, France, and Israel. Its ADRAS-J spacecraft made history in 2024 as the first vehicle ever to approach and photograph a large piece of orbital debris up close, a discarded Japanese rocket upper stage, and it completed operations and began its own deorbit in March 2026. JAXA has since contracted the follow-on ADRAS-J2 for roughly 12 billion yen to go back to that same rocket body and actually remove it with a robotic arm. Alongside that flagship line Astroscale is preparing ELSA-M, billed as the world's first commercial end-of-life deorbit service and now booked on Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket; LEXI, a geostationary life-extension servicer; the Astroscale U.S. Refueler, which is set to perform the first refueling of a United States Space Force asset; and ISSA-J1, a 2027 mission that will inspect two retired Japanese satellites in different orbits on a single flight. The company remains deeply loss-making: for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2026 it reported 5.94 billion yen of IFRS revenue against a 9.98 billion yen operating loss, with an order backlog of 37.94 billion yen. In June 2026 it closed a 30.6 billion yen strategic growth financing with Hulic and SKY Perfect JSAT to fund facility expansion and LEXI-P production.", "summarySource": "https://www.astroscale.com/en/news/astroscales-adras-j-mission-completes-operations-begins-deorbit", "status": "Public", "founded": 2013, "headquarters": "Tokyo, Japan", "country": "Japan", "ceo": "Nobu Okada", "website": "https://astroscale.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/astroscale.png", "industrySlugs": [ "orbital-economy", "defense", "satellites" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-01", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/astroscale", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/astroscale" }, { "slug": "aurora-innovation", "name": "Aurora Innovation", "summary": "Aurora Innovation is a self-driving vehicle company now focused on commercial autonomous trucking, with the Aurora Driver deployed first as Aurora Driver for Freight. After beginning regular driverless customer deliveries between Dallas and Houston in late April 2025, Aurora has tripled its driverless network to 10 routes across the Sun Belt - including a roughly 1,000-mile Fort Worth–Phoenix lane - and in May 2026 ran its first lane outside Texas, a ~200-mile Dallas–Oklahoma City route with Volvo's VNL Autonomous. By June 2026 it had surpassed 440,000 driverless miles with zero Aurora Driver-attributed collisions and 100% on-time performance. Customers now include Werner, Hirschbach, McLane (Berkshire Hathaway), Detmar, Uber Freight, Value Truck, Charger Logistics, and others, and Aurora runs both an asset-light Driver-as-a-Service subscription model (carrier owns the trucks) and a Transportation-as-a-Service model (Aurora owns and operates the trucks), with vehicle partners PACCAR, Volvo, and AUMOVIO. Q2 2026 revenue was $2M against a $270M net loss, and management reaffirmed guidance of $14-16M for 2026 with a goal of exiting the year with 200+ driverless trucks (~20-25 by end of Q3) and ~$80M run-rate.", "summarySource": "https://ir.aurora.tech/news-events/press-releases/detail/147/aurora-announces-second-quarter-2026-results", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: AUR)", "founded": 2017, "headquarters": "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania", "country": "US", "ceo": "Chris Urmson", "website": "https://aurora.tech", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/aurora-innovation.png", "industrySlugs": [ "autonomous-vehicles", "artificial-intelligence", "logistics" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-05", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/aurora-innovation", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/aurora-innovation" }, { "slug": "autoflight", "name": "AutoFlight", "summary": "AutoFlight (Shanghai Fengfei Aviation Technology) is a Shanghai-based eVTOL developer founded by Yuneec founder Tian Yu, with R&D and certification outposts in Augsburg, Germany and Shenzhen. It leads the world in cargo eVTOL: its autonomous 2-ton CarryAll (V2000CG) holds the complete CAAC certificate set - the world's first ton-class eVTOL type certificate (March 2024), production certificate (December 2024), and airworthiness certificate with first customer delivery (July 2025) - plus the world's first overseas eVTOL type-certificate validation, from Indonesia's DGCA in June 2026. CarryAll flies real missions, from offshore oil-platform resupply with CNOOC to mountain tea logistics in Guizhou. The passenger Prosperity, now catalogued as a 1+5 six-seat aircraft with a 200 km operational range, is in the final phase of CAAC type certification but has not been granted a type certificate as of September 2026. A 5.7-ton V5000 Matrix platform entered certification in 2026. Recent commercial paper includes a 60-aircraft Whitesky Indonesia MOU, a 150-aircraft Satar/Inno One cargo letter of intent, and a July 2026 SF Group partnership for offshore-energy logistics. Backed by ~$100M from Team Global and a strategic investment of 'hundreds of millions of dollars' from battery giant CATL.", "summarySource": "https://www.autoflight.com/en/news/autoflight-and-sf-group-sign-partnership-to-advance-low-altitude-trans/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2016, "headquarters": "Shanghai, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Tian Yu (founder & chairman)", "website": "https://www.autoflight.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/autoflight.png", "industrySlugs": [ "evtol", "drone-delivery" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "evtol", "name": "eVTOL", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/evtol" }, { "slug": "drone-delivery", "name": "Drone Delivery", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/drone-delivery" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-07", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/autoflight", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/autoflight" }, { "slug": "axiom-space", "name": "Axiom Space", "summary": "Axiom Space, founded in Houston in 2016 by former NASA ISS program manager Michael Suffredini and entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian, is the leading commercial human-spaceflight company, built around three lines of business: private astronaut missions to the ISS, the Axiom Station commercial space station, and next-generation spacesuits. It flew Ax-1, the first all-private crewed mission to the ISS, in April 2022, and has since flown four missions carrying 16 astronauts - most recently Ax-4 (June-July 2025), which returned India, Poland, and Hungary to human spaceflight; NASA has ordered a fifth mission (Ax-5, NET January 2027) whose crew remains unannounced as of August 2026. In 2020 NASA awarded Axiom a $140 million contract to attach the first commercial module to the ISS, and in September 2022 a $228.5 million task order (under a contract worth up to $1.26 billion) to build the Artemis moonwalking spacesuit, the AxEMU, covering four suits. NASA's early-2026 Artemis restructuring turned Artemis III into a non-landing rendezvous test flight and pushed the first crewed lunar landing to Artemis IV (targeted early 2028) - the mission the AxEMU suits are now built for; Axiom became NASA's sole suit developer after Collins Aerospace was descoped in 2024, and while a NASA OIG report in April 2026 warned the suit could still slip toward 2031, Axiom is running a roughly yearlong qualification-testing campaign toward a 2027 flight demonstration. The company hit severe financial turbulence in late 2024 - roughly 100 layoffs, voluntary 20% pay cuts, and late payments to contractors including SpaceX - followed by rapid CEO churn (Suffredini out August 2024, Ghaffarian interim, Tejpaul Bhatia April-October 2025, then NASA-veteran astrophysicist Jonathan Cirtain). In December 2024 it re-sequenced station assembly to launch a Payload Power Thermal Module first; that target has since slipped from NET 2027 to early 2028, with a free-flying station still expected to form as early as 2028. Finances have since stabilized: a $100M round at a ~$2B valuation (March 2025), $100M from Hungary's 4iG (December 2025), and an oversubscribed $525M+ round closed June 2026 with Qatar Investment Authority, Type One Ventures, and MUFG Bank. With ~700 employees, Axiom launched its first two orbital data center nodes in January 2026, plans a third node aboard the ISS with Spacebilt in 2027, is evaluating a role for that network in the Pentagon's proposed Golden Dome missile-defense architecture, and is competing for NASA's Commercial LEO Destinations Phase 2 award - whose original full-and-open competition structure NASA reaffirmed in June 2026 after briefly floating a government-owned core-module alternative in March. NASA posted a CLDC presolicitation on September 4, 2026 that slipped the final RFP from late August to the end of September 2026, with proposals due 60 days later and selection still targeted for spring 2027. In early September 2026 NASA also directed Axiom to slim AxEMU into a Sortie Suit variant so a 2028 Artemis IV landing stays in reach.", "summarySource": "https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/b4d395c5e6164ffaa451046aae87a18b/view", "status": "Private", "founded": 2016, "headquarters": "Houston, Texas", "country": "US", "ceo": "Jonathan Cirtain", "website": "https://www.axiomspace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/axiom-space.png", "industrySlugs": [ "space-stations", "orbital-economy", "human-spaceflight", "orbital-data-centers", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "space-stations", "name": "Space Stations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/space-stations" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 2, "missed": 0, "total": 4 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/axiom-space", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/axiom-space" }, { "slug": "baidu-apollo", "name": "Baidu Apollo", "summary": "Baidu Apollo is Baidu's autonomous-driving platform and the operator of Apollo Go, one of the world's largest fully driverless robotaxi networks. On its August 18, 2026 Q2 earnings call Baidu disclosed Apollo Go has delivered more than 23 million cumulative public rides and over 350 million autonomous kilometers across a 28-city global footprint (including a first Asian expansion beyond China and Hong Kong, into South Korea, in February 2026), with roughly 1 million fully driverless rides in the quarter alone and a safety record of one airbag deployment per 14.4 million km, with management saying Apollo Go has reached unit-economics breakeven in its largest China operating city. That international growth came alongside a rockier domestic quarter: a March 31, 2026 mass system failure stranded over 100 Apollo Go vehicles on elevated highways in Wuhan (no injuries), prompting Chinese regulators to pause new robotaxi permits nationwide for several months; Baidu said the resulting operational adjustments weighed on ride volume in certain domestic cities before operations began resuming on a stronger footing in August. The same Q2 quarter, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued GB 44721-2026, the country's first mandatory national safety standard for L3/L4 automated driving, taking effect July 1, 2027. Apollo Go runs fully driverless commercial service in China, Dubai, and on Abu Dhabi's Yas Island, began Level 4 open-road trials in eastern Switzerland (AmiGo, with PostBus) on June 1, 2026, and has kept widening its Hong Kong testing scope - an August 14 approval added the Southern District to its North Lantau driverless zone. On August 19-20 it also began an MTR/Airport Authority road trial of four RT6 vehicles shuttling between West Kowloon high-speed-rail station and the Airport Express Kowloon Station, with passenger air-rail service targeted for Q2 2027. It also runs safety-operator road testing in London with Freenow/Lyft and Uber, begun July 28, and in July 2026 signed an MoU with Kazakhstan's Turlov Private Holding to explore autonomous mobility services.", "summarySource": "https://www.chinadailyhk.com/hk/article/638222", "status": "Division (Baidu: NASDAQ BIDU; HKEX: 9888)", "founded": 2017, "headquarters": "Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Robin Li (Baidu CEO); Yunpeng Wang (Intelligent Driving Group President)", "website": "https://www.apollogo.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/baidu-apollo.png", "industrySlugs": [ "robotaxis", "autonomous-vehicles", "artificial-intelligence", "electric-vehicles", "smart-cities" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "robotaxis", "name": "Robotaxis", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/robotaxis" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" }, { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" } ], "parent": { "name": "Baidu, Inc.", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "division", "source": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/baidu-announces-first-quarter-2026-results-302774476.html" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-07", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/baidu-apollo", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/baidu-apollo" }, { "slug": "beta-technologies", "name": "Beta Technologies", "summary": "Beta Technologies is an electric aerospace company building the ALIA aircraft family, electric propulsion systems, charging infrastructure, batteries, and flight-critical systems for cargo, passenger, medical, and defense markets. Founded in 2017 by Kyle Clark, the company went public on the NYSE in November 2025 and uses a stepwise commercialization path centered on certifying its conventional ALIA CTOL aircraft first while scaling motor, charger, and engineering services. By Q1 2026, Beta had grown its aircraft backlog to 991 units worth $3.9 billion, and by Q2 2026 had logged over 190,000 nautical miles of flight testing across a 138-site charging network (targeting 250,000 nautical miles by year-end 2026). Beta was selected for seven of the eight U.S. eIPP launch programs and flew the program's first operational missions on July 10, 2026, using the ALIA CX300 to carry United Therapeutics' manufactured organs across a ~275-nautical-mile Virginia-Maryland corridor, and by August 2026 was running eIPP cargo and medical-logistics missions with partners in New York, Texas, Utah, Maryland/Virginia, and Louisiana. At the July 2026 Farnborough Airshow, Beta unveiled the MV250 - a hybrid-electric autonomous VTOL for military logistics built around a GE Aerospace CT7/T700 turbine and Sikorsky's MATRIX autonomy stack - helped GE, NASA, and Boeing complete the first hybrid-electric flight above 30,000 feet, and signed a term sheet with UK carrier Loganair for up to 10 ALIA CTOL aircraft, positioning Loganair to become Europe's first electric-aircraft airline. Q2 2026 revenue was $14.7 million (up 146% year over year, beating guidance), with FY2026 guidance raised to $42-$50 million and $1.48 billion in cash as of June 30, 2026. H500A motor certification has slipped past its original H1 2026 target, though Beta reported in its Q2 2026 results that it reached agreement with the FAA on the motor's continued-rotation compliance approach and has formal FAA testing underway; CEO Kyle Clark still targets ALIA CX300 type certification in the second half of 2027 (down from an original late-2025 goal), with the A250 eVTOL following around 2028.", "summarySource": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260812353945/en/BETA-Technologies-Inc.-Announces-Second-Quarter-2026-Results", "status": "Public (NYSE: BETA)", "founded": 2017, "headquarters": "South Burlington, Vermont", "country": "US", "ceo": "Kyle Clark", "website": "https://www.beta.team", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/beta-technologies.png", "industrySlugs": [ "evtol", "civilian-aircrafts", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "evtol", "name": "eVTOL", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/evtol" }, { "slug": "civilian-aircrafts", "name": "Civilian Aircrafts", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/civilian-aircrafts" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-08-29", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/beta-technologies", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/beta-technologies" }, { "slug": "biontech", "name": "BioNTech", "summary": "BioNTech is a Mainz-based immunotherapy company that, with Pfizer, co-developed Comirnaty (BNT162b2) - the first authorized mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and one of the best-selling drugs in history. Founded in 2008 by Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci (with Christoph Huber) as an individualized cancer-immunotherapy company, BioNTech is now aggressively redeploying its pandemic-era war chest (~€16.6B in cash) back toward oncology, including a manufacturing-network pullback (up to 1,860 roles, sites in Germany and Singapore) as it winds down excess COVID capacity. The first concrete sale from that pullback landed on August 27, 2026, when a DUBAG Group fund agreed to buy peptide-tools subsidiary JPT Peptide Technologies; other site divestments remain under review through the end of September 2026. Its centerpiece is BNT327 (pumitamig), a PD-L1xVEGF-A bispecific antibody obtained through the 2024-25 Biotheus acquisition and co-developed with Bristol Myers Squibb in a partnership worth up to ~$11.1B, now advancing across seven pivotal ROSETTA-program trials (part of 14 pivotal trials companywide) in lung, breast, gastric and other solid tumors. The pipeline also spans a second late-stage ADC platform with DualityBio (trastuzumab pamirtecan, whose breast-cancer indication reached a China BLA filing in April 2026, and the newly Phase 3 elfetabart drozuntecan in prostate cancer), a fourth late-stage asset in gotistobart (BNT316/ONC-392, with OncoC4), a next-generation anti-CTLA-4 antibody that cut the risk of death 54% versus chemotherapy in Phase 3 stage-1 lung-cancer data, individualized neoantigen mRNA cancer vaccines (autogene cevumeran/BNT122 with Genentech), CAR-T and infectious disease, including BNT168, a therapeutic mRNA HIV vaccine that began a randomized Phase 1 first-in-human trial (NCT07698600) on August 4, 2026. COVID revenue keeps declining sharply (H1 2026 revenue just €223.7M, FY2025 was €2.87B) and BioNTech cut its FY2026 revenue guidance to €1.6-1.9B on August 4, 2026 while posting a widening H1 2026 net loss of €1.35B. The stock jumped ~23% on August 19, 2026 as investors refocused on the oncology pipeline, then eased to a ~$26.1B market cap by early September. Incoming CEO Guido Oelkers (succeeding founder Uğur Şahin by February 1, 2027) inherits a validated-platform leader financing a multi-year bet to become a multi-product oncology company by 2030. On August 28, 2026 BioNTech terminated the Phase 2 BNT122-01 trial of autogene cevumeran as an adjuvant monotherapy in resected colorectal cancer after an independent Data Safety Monitoring Board found a numerical survival imbalance versus watchful waiting and judged continuation unlikely to change the outcome, though it reported no new safety signal; the separate Phase 2 IMcode003 trial testing autogene cevumeran in combination with chemotherapy and checkpoint inhibition for pancreatic cancer is unaffected and continues.", "summarySource": "https://www.biontech.com/int/en/home/mediaroom/news/statements/2026/08/Update-on-Divestment-of-JPT-Peptide-Technologies-GmbH-as-Part-of-BioNTech-s-Planned-Manufacturing-Footprint-Consolidation.html", "status": "Public", "founded": 2008, "headquarters": "Mainz, Germany", "country": "DE", "ceo": "Uğur Şahin", "website": "https://www.biontech.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/biontech.png", "industrySlugs": [ "biotech" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "biotech", "name": "Biotech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/biotech" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 8, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 0, "missed": 1, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-06", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/biontech", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/biontech" }, { "slug": "blueorigin", "name": "Blue Origin", "summary": "Blue Origin is a privately held aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos that develops reusable launch vehicles, rocket engines, lunar landers, in-space mobility systems, and satellite communications infrastructure. Its current programs span the New Shepard suborbital system, the New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, the BE-4 engine family that also powers ULA's Vulcan, the Blue Moon lunar lander family, the Blue Ring spacecraft platform, and the TeraWave network. The FAA closed its NG-3 mishap investigation and lifted the New Glenn grounding on May 22, 2026 - pinning the BlueBird 7 deployment failure on a cryogenic leak that froze a hydraulic line - but six days later, on May 28, a New Glenn exploded during a hotfire at Cape Canaveral's LC-36, destroying the transporter-erector at Blue Origin's only New Glenn pad. CEO Dave Limp said the rocket will fly again before year-end via a hybrid horizontal-integration/crane-erect path that skips replacing the destroyed transporter-erector, with the propellant farm, a second flight-ready booster, and three upper stages intact; on July 24, 2026 NASA and Blue Origin agreed to conduct New Glenn second-stage (GS2) hot fire testing at Stennis Space Center's B-2 stand beginning this fall while LC-36 recovers, and NASA's Pegasus barge is due at Kennedy Space Center around August 10-12, 2026 to carry the completed GS2 to Stennis. The Blue Moon MK1 'Endurance' cargo lunar lander has completed thermal vacuum testing at NASA Johnson, but with New Glenn grounded its launch to the Moon has slipped from a fall-2026 target to early 2027. Separately, a February 2026 NASA Artemis architecture overhaul reassigned the crewed Blue Moon Mark 2 lander to compete with SpaceX's Starship for the program's first Moon landing (now targeted for Artemis IV, as soon as early 2028) following a 2027 crewed low-Earth-orbit docking test on the restructured Artemis III. In a landmark shift after 26 years of near-total self-funding (roughly $30B cumulative), Blue Origin raised about $10B at a $130B valuation in July 2026 - its first-ever outside round, led by Coatue (~$4B) with Jeff Bezos adding ~$2B - to bankroll Limp's target cadence of roughly 100 launches a year against an estimated ~$4.8B 2026 spend. Separately, Florida's governor announced on May 22, 2026 that Blue Origin will invest $600 million in an 830,000-square-foot upper-stage manufacturing expansion (\"Project Horizon\") at its Rocket Park campus in Merritt Island, adding about 500 jobs averaging over $98,000. The company broke ground on a new ~120,000-square-foot Cape Canaveral payload processing facility on August 31, 2026, and on September 1, 2026 NASA awarded it a $700M contract to build and deliver a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter - built on the Blue Ring platform - by December 31, 2028, extending Blue Origin's business beyond Earth-orbit launch and lunar landers into deep-space communications infrastructure. Bloomberg reported on September 3, 2026 that Blue Origin has hired at least 47 alumni of Amazon's Leo satellite venture over the past year, many now working on TeraWave, as it builds out its own broadband constellation team.", "summarySource": "https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-as-mars-telecommunications-network-provider/", "status": "Active", "founded": 2000, "headquarters": "Kent, Washington", "country": "US", "ceo": "Dave Limp", "website": "https://www.blueorigin.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/blueorigin.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "orbital-economy", "satellite-mega-constellations", "satellite-internet", "space-stations", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" }, { "slug": "space-stations", "name": "Space Stations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/space-stations" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 9, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/blueorigin", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/blueorigin" }, { "slug": "boeing", "name": "Boeing", "summary": "Boeing is one of the world's largest aerospace companies, spanning commercial airplanes, defense and space systems, and aftermarket services. The 2026 turnaround gathered pace through the first half of the year: 314 commercial deliveries in H1 2026 (its best first half since 2018), a Q2 net loss of $428M on $24.6B of revenue that nonetheless produced the company's first positive free cash flow quarter (+$631M) in over a year, and a record total backlog of $715B including more than 6,200 commercial aircraft. The 737 MAX line reached rate 47 per month in May 2026 and gained a fourth final-assembly line - the Everett 'North Line' - in July, with rate 52 targeted for early 2027. At the Farnborough Airshow (July 20-24, 2026) Boeing booked 170+ aircraft led by SMBC's 100-jet 737 MAX order, while the long-delayed 777X neared its certification finish line even as Emirates declined to accept the first 10-11 early-build 777-9s over their age and GE Aerospace temporarily paused GE9X engine shipments pending a durability fix. The FAA certified the 737 MAX 7 on August 3, 2026, and on August 10 Boeing agreed to sell its Wisk Aero, Insitu, and SkyGrid subsidiaries to Archer Aviation for a near-20% equity stake. August deliveries were 51 aircraft (41 737 MAX, 4 787s), a slight dip from July's 53 and from 57 a year earlier, bringing 2026 commercial deliveries to 418 through August - the most through eight months since 2018, but still 57 jets behind Airbus (475). On August 21 Boeing's roughly 17,000 SPEEA-represented engineers and technicians rejected a tentative contract and authorized a strike if no new deal is reached before contracts expire October 6; talks were set to resume September 8, with no public agreement as of September 9. IBM completed its purchase of HRL Laboratories from Boeing and GM on August 26. Boeing shares closed at $210.73 on September 8 (market cap about $166.6B). The company remains one of the two central global commercial-jet manufacturers alongside Airbus, with its trajectory now hinging on sustaining the 737 ramp without reintroducing defects, closing out 737 MAX 10 certification, avoiding an engineers' strike, and steering the 777X's remaining ETOPS testing toward 2027 certification.", "summarySource": "https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-august-deliveries-dip-787-handovers-fall-2026-09-08/", "status": "Public (NYSE: BA)", "founded": 1916, "headquarters": "Arlington, Virginia", "country": "US", "ceo": "Kelly Ortberg", "website": "https://www.boeing.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/boeing.png", "industrySlugs": [ "civilian-aircrafts", "defense", "rockets", "space-stations" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "civilian-aircrafts", "name": "Civilian Aircrafts", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/civilian-aircrafts" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "space-stations", "name": "Space Stations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/space-stations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 13, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/boeing", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/boeing" }, { "slug": "boom-supersonic", "name": "Boom Supersonic", "summary": "Boom Supersonic is building Overture, a 60-80 seat Mach 1.7 supersonic airliner aimed at restoring commercial supersonic travel on 600+ routes at business-class economics. After XB-1 became the first independently developed jet to fly supersonic in 2025, Boom pivoted in late 2025 to make the Symphony engine and its Superpower 42 MW industrial-gas-turbine derivative the near-term commercial focus - CEO Blake Scholl said in April 2026 that roughly 90% of company efforts are now on propulsion, with Symphony and Superpower sharing about 80% of hardware. In a late-August 2026 podcast, Scholl said the Symphony sprint core was a few weeks from its first run at the Colorado Air and Space Port. Aviation Week reported on September 8 that the prototype core is nearing completion and expected to begin ground tests at Watkins, Colorado, within two months, a slip out of the original Q3 2026 window into roughly November, with a fully integrated 42 MW Superpower pre-production turbine targeted for assembly by end-2026 and first Crusoe deliveries in late 2027 en route to a 1 GW-to-4 GW/year production ramp by 2030. Boom has nearly $1B in funding, a 130-aircraft Overture order book from American Airlines, United Airlines, and Japan Airlines, and a $1.25B+ Superpower launch backlog with Crusoe, while its $50M Greensboro Overture Superfactory remains largely idle ahead of a December 31, 2026 lease-termination threshold tied to a 500-employee benchmark. Two regulatory tailwinds are advancing in parallel: the FAA's proposed rule repealing the U.S. overland supersonic ban (public comment period closed August 17, 2026, final rule still targeted mid-2027; a separate takeoff-and-landing noise rule has not yet been proposed) and the Supersonic Aviation Modernization Act, which cleared the Senate Commerce Committee on July 22, 2026 and still awaits a full Senate floor vote as of September 7, 2026.", "summarySource": "https://aviationweek.com/business-aviation/aircraft-propulsion/boom-supersonic-gears-engine-prototype-core-testing", "status": "Private", "founded": 2014, "headquarters": "Denver, Colorado", "country": "US", "ceo": "Blake Scholl", "website": "https://boomsupersonic.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/boom-supersonic.png", "industrySlugs": [ "civilian-aircrafts", "power-generation" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "civilian-aircrafts", "name": "Civilian Aircrafts", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/civilian-aircrafts" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/boom-supersonic", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/boom-supersonic" }, { "slug": "boston-dynamics", "name": "Boston Dynamics", "summary": "Boston Dynamics is a pioneering robotics company founded in 1992 as an MIT spin-off that now commercializes mobile robots for industrial inspection, warehouse automation, and humanoid manipulation. Its commercial portfolio spans Spot, Stretch, and Orbit, while the all-electric Atlas formally entered production at CES 2026 and is now demonstrating heavy-object manipulation and whole-body control via reinforcement learning. Now wholly owned by Hyundai-affiliated shareholders - Hyundai Motor Group bought out SoftBank's remaining ~9.65% stake for about $325M in June 2026, then raised roughly ₩1.2T (~$850M) more via a Jul-Aug 2026 rights offering that also lifted Chairman Euisun Chung's personal stake to about 25% - and backed by a $26B U.S. investment plan including a robotics factory targeting 30,000 Atlas units/year by 2028, Boston Dynamics has deployed more than 2,000 Spot and Stretch robots globally and has fully committed its 2026 Atlas production run to Hyundai's Robotics Metaplant Application Center and Google DeepMind, with additional customers planned for early 2027. At Hyundai's August 26, 2026 CEO Investor Day the company reaffirmed 2028 U.S. robot production of 30,000 units a year, said 25,000 units of initial volume are already committed, and said the factory site will be announced by year-end, with Atlas deployment at Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America from 2028. Amanda McMaster has served as interim CEO since founder/CEO Robert Playter retired at end-February 2026, with no permanent successor named as of August 2026. Parent Hyundai Motor's 25,000+ unit Atlas deployment plan had been a central flashpoint in a South Korean union wage dispute that cost Hyundai an estimated 42,510+ vehicles in lost production since July; Hyundai and the Korean Metal Workers' Union reached a tentative wage agreement around August 24-25, 2026, pending a union ratification vote on August 31. On September 8, 2026 Dynamic Creatures emerged from stealth as Boston Dynamics' official hospitality and entertainment partner for mobile interactive character robots, already working with an unnamed theme park and a retailer.", "summarySource": "https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/09/08/3357547/0/en/dynamic-creatures-emerges-from-stealth-to-launch-new-category-of-mobile-interactive-character-robots-for-hospitality-and-entertainment.html", "status": "Private (wholly owned by Hyundai-affiliated shareholders)", "founded": 1992, "headquarters": "Waltham, Massachusetts", "country": "US", "ceo": "Amanda McMaster (Interim)", "website": "https://bostondynamics.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/boston-dynamics.png", "industrySlugs": [ "humanoid-robots", "industrial-automation", "warehouse-automation", "logistics" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "humanoid-robots", "name": "Humanoid Robots", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/humanoid-robots" } ], "parent": { "name": "Hyundai Motor Group", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "subsidiary", "source": "https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/companies/20260719/hyundai-motor-chief-to-raise-boston-dynamics-stake-fueling-nasdaq-ipo-prospect" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 10, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/boston-dynamics", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/boston-dynamics" }, { "slug": "byd", "name": "BYD", "summary": "BYD (Build Your Dreams) is a Chinese high-tech manufacturer spanning automobiles, batteries, electronics, renewable energy, and rail transit. Its auto business is unusually vertically integrated, with in-house batteries, motors, power electronics, and automotive semiconductors underpinning a lineup that now ranges from low-cost EVs and plug-in hybrids to premium Denza and Yangwang vehicles. First-half 2026 revenue fell 7.13% YoY to ¥344.82B (~$50.9B) and net profit dropped 20.54% to ¥12.33B as China NEV weakness and foreign-exchange losses outweighed overseas growth; auto-related revenue was ¥275.34B (-8.98%) while gross margin rose to 18.85% from 18.01%. H1 NEV sales were 1,808,511 (-15.72%), with the Q2 decline narrowing to 3.24% after a 30% Q1 drop, and overseas shipments of about 792,000 (+67.8%) making up roughly 44% of H1 volume. August 2026 NEV wholesales reached 440,293 (+17.84% YoY), the highest month of 2026, with a record 189,466 overseas units (43.03% of volume) offsetting still-soft domestic sales. On August 28, 2026 BYD opened its 10,000th FLASH Charging station in Shenzhen, doubling the network in under five months across 325 cities and reaching halfway to its 20,000 year-end target, with 1.83 million users (nearly one-third non-BYD). BYD's Szeged plant in Hungary began trial production in January 2026, but EVP Stella Li said in June 2026 that full-scale series production has slipped to Q4 2026 as equipment is still being installed; the same month BYD put its planned €1B Turkey (Manisa) plant on hold after Ankara withdrew tax incentives, making Hungary its top European manufacturing priority. On September 3, 2026 BYD opened its first Indonesian plant, a ~$632M, 150,000-vehicle/year facility in Subang, West Java (its 13th plant worldwide), and on September 2 BYD Semiconductor began mass-producing an in-house 4D radar chip to further vertically integrate its assisted-driving sensor stack.", "summarySource": "https://en.tempo.co/read/2118878/byd-opens-rp16-trillion-ev-factory-in-west-javas-subang", "status": "Public (SZSE: 002594 / HKEX: 1211)", "founded": 1995, "headquarters": "Shenzhen, Guangdong, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Wang Chuanfu", "website": "https://www.byd.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/byd.png", "industrySlugs": [ "electric-vehicles", "energy-storage", "semiconductors", "autonomous-vehicles", "humanoid-robots" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" }, { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" }, { "slug": "semiconductors", "name": "Semiconductors", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/semiconductors" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "humanoid-robots", "name": "Humanoid Robots", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/humanoid-robots" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/byd", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/byd" }, { "slug": "cas-space", "name": "CAS Space", "summary": "CAS Space (Zhongke Aerospace) is a 2018 commercial spinoff majority-owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by founder and chairman Yang Yiqiang - former chief commander of the state Long March 11 solid rocket. Headquartered in Guangzhou, it operates the solid-fuel Kinetica-1 (Lijian-1), one of China's most-flown commercial rockets with 15 launches and 14 successes since 2022 (110 satellites - the first Chinese commercial rocket to top 100). After committing on July 24, 2026 to a monthly Kinetica-1 cadence for the second half of 2026, the company has not confirmed another flight: Y17 left the factory August 13 for a first-ever sea launch (three satellites from waters near Guangdong) and completed a full shipboard rehearsal on August 25, while Y18 passed factory review July 31 for a nine-satellite land mission from Dongfeng, and neither had flown as of September 11, 2026. In March 2026 it successfully debuted the medium-lift kerolox Kinetica-2 (Lijian-2); its second flight, carrying 18 Qianfan constellation satellites, remains targeted for October 2026 after the Y2 vehicle left Guangzhou for Jiuquan on August 26. CAS Space filed for a $607M IPO on the Shanghai STAR Market in April 2026 at a target valuation of ~15 billion yuan (~$2.1B), refreshed the prospectus on June 29, 2026 (FY2025 revenue ~277M yuan against a ~1.12B yuan net loss; 2029 profitability target), and still had no trading date as of September 11, 2026. It is scaling output at a new Zhejiang 'super factory' and developing first-stage reusability via the in-house Kinecore-2 engine.", "summarySource": "https://www.cas-space.com/list/16.html", "status": "Private", "founded": 2018, "headquarters": "Guangzhou, Guangdong, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Yang Yiqiang", "website": "https://www.cas-space.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/cas-space.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "space-tourism", "orbital-economy", "satellite-mega-constellations" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/cas-space", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/cas-space" }, { "slug": "casc", "name": "CASC", "summary": "China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) is the state-owned prime contractor for China's space program and the world's most prolific launch organization by missions flown. Wholly owned by the central government through SASAC and led by chairman Chen Mingbo, it develops and operates the Long March (Changzheng) rocket family - which flew its 661st cumulative mission on August 4, 2026, delivering a 23rd batch of GuoWang broadband satellites - along with the Shenzhou crewed spacecraft, Tianzhou cargo vehicles, the Tiangong space station, BeiDou navigation and GuoWang broadband satellites, the Chang'e lunar and Tianwen planetary probes, and China's strategic missiles. After a national-record 73 launches in 2025, CASC is targeting over 100 launches in 2026 amid an industry-wide national push toward ~140, debuted the partially reusable Long March 12B in June 2026, and saw its Tianwen-2 probe reach the quasi-moon asteroid Kamo'oalewa on July 6, 2026. On July 10, 2026 it made China the second nation ever to recover an orbital rocket first stage, when the new single-stick, partially reusable Long March 10B flew its maiden mission from Hainan and captured its booster in a sea-based net - a landmark step toward closing the reusability gap with SpaceX, with a reflight of the recovered booster still targeted before the end of 2026. That momentum was interrupted on August 10, 2026, when a Long March 7A broke apart shortly after liftoff and lost its satellite payload - only the vehicle's second failure ever - triggering an engine investigation that put a question mark over the timing of Chang'e 7; CASC kept other Long March variants flying through the investigation, with a Long March 5B launching an eighth GuoWang satellite batch on August 13, 2026, and on August 19, 2026 rolled the Chang'e-7 probe and its Long March 5 (Y14) rocket out to the Wenchang pad ahead of a planned August 24, 2026 launch, but the mission was then postponed by Typhoon Narra and, per an August 23 China Manned Space Agency statement, cannot fly within the 2026 window at all - multiple outlets report a possible slip into 2027 - with no root cause or formal fleet clearance yet announced for the 7A investigation either. CASC is also advancing the triple-core Long March 10 toward a crewed Moon landing before 2030: the Long March 10A's own orbital debut is separately reported to carry a lunar navigation satellite ahead of the uncrewed Mengzhou 1 capsule test, still targeted around late 2026 but flagged as at risk of slipping into early 2027 - neither had flown as of September 8, 2026, and no Long March launch has been confirmed since the 665th mission on August 25. On August 28, 2026 the Shenzhou-23 crew completed its first spacewalk, repairing a Tiangong solar wing and installing debris shields.", "summarySource": "https://english.news.cn/20260828/8c958f30655a4528ba2810e0a5f7cf8d/c.html", "status": "State-Owned (SASAC)", "founded": 1999, "headquarters": "Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Chen Mingbo (Chairman)", "website": "https://english.spacechina.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/casc.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "orbital-economy", "space-stations", "satellite-mega-constellations", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "space-stations", "name": "Space Stations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/space-stations" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 8, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 2, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/casc", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/casc" }, { "slug": "catl", "name": "CATL", "summary": "Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL), founded in Ningde, Fujian in 2011 by Robin Zeng and Huang Shilin, is the largest battery manufacturer on Earth and the single most important company in the electrification of transport and the grid. It held 39.9% of global EV battery installations from January through July 2026 on 289.6 GWh, roughly 2.7 times its nearest rival BYD, and has ranked first worldwide in energy-storage battery shipments for five consecutive years, shipping 121 GWh of storage cells in 2025. FY2025 revenue reached RMB423.7B (about $61B) with net profit up 42% to RMB72.2B, and H1 2026 accelerated hard: revenue of RMB276.9B (up 54.8%) and net profit of RMB43.3B (up 42.0%), with grid storage now nearly a fifth of the business at RMB53.2B. The product line spans the Shenxing superfast-charging LFP battery (third generation charges 10-80% in 3 minutes 44 seconds), the Qilin and Qilin Condensed high-density packs, the Freevoy hybrid battery, the Naxtra sodium-ion battery entering full mass production by the end of 2026, and the TENER grid-storage family, whose sodium-ion variant launched in June 2026 with first China customer deliveries still targeted for September 2026. CATL raised $5.2B in a May 2025 Hong Kong listing, the largest IPO in the world that year, and is spending it on a European build-out: a 40 GWh cell plant in Debrecen, Hungary, which received an occupancy permit for its first cell building on August 25, 2026 but remains halted after nickel-exposure findings, and a 50 GWh LFP joint venture with Stellantis in Zaragoza, Spain, now guided to Q1 2027. Its technology now reaches the US indirectly through licensing, with Ford's BlueOval Battery Park Michigan starting operations on CATL-licensed LFP chemistry in June 2026, even as CATL itself remains on the Pentagon's Section 1260H list of Chinese military companies. Market capitalization stood at about $233B in September 2026, down from an April record near $306B after the Hungary halt and a lithium-mine licence revocation at Jianxiawo.", "summarySource": "https://cnevpost.com/2026/09/07/global-ev-battery-market-share-jan-jul-2026/", "status": "Public (SZSE: 300750 / HKEX: 3750)", "founded": 2011, "headquarters": "Ningde, Fujian, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Robin Zeng (Zeng Yuqun)", "website": "https://www.catl.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/catl.png", "industrySlugs": [ "energy-storage", "battery-recycling", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 12, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 2, "missed": 0, "total": 4 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/catl", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/catl" }, { "slug": "comac", "name": "COMAC", "summary": "COMAC (Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China) is China's state-owned commercial aircraft manufacturer and the core vehicle for the country's indigenous airliner program. Its current aircraft family spans the in-service C909 regional jet, the in-service C919 narrow-body, and the C929 wide-body now in detailed design. COMAC has moved beyond a symbolic national program into real airline operations, customer support, and export expansion in Southeast Asia: Air Cambodia converted its 10+10 C909 commitment into a firm purchase agreement on July 17, 2026 - COMAC's first bulk order from a foreign flag carrier - and on August 12, 2026 the C919 flew its first-ever international route, Air China's daily Beijing-Ulaanbaatar service. The high-altitude C919-600 variant also completed its maiden flight on July 29, 2026. Even so, 2026 C919 deliveries continue to lag well behind the airlines' 33-aircraft annual plan: eight in the first half, two more in July, and none in August, for 10 year-to-date and a cumulative fleet of about 42. A September 1, 2026 Leeham analysis, citing IBA, framed the production ramp - not the Mongolia debut - as COMAC's real test, with IBA expecting roughly 28 C919 deliveries in 2026 rising toward 93 by 2030. The C919 still lacks FAA and EASA certification needed to reach Western markets.", "summarySource": "https://leehamnews.com/2026/09/01/boosting-c919-production-rates-remains-comacs-real-test/", "status": "State-Owned Enterprise", "founded": 2008, "headquarters": "Pudong, Shanghai, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "He Dongfeng (Chairman)", "website": "https://english.comac.cc/", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/comac.png", "industrySlugs": [ "civilian-aircrafts" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "civilian-aircrafts", "name": "Civilian Aircrafts", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/civilian-aircrafts" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/comac", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/comac" }, { "slug": "commonwealth-fusion-systems", "name": "Commonwealth Fusion Systems", "summary": "Commonwealth Fusion Systems is building commercial fusion systems around high-temperature superconducting magnet technology developed with MIT. SPARC, its fusion-energy demonstration tokamak under construction in Devens, Massachusetts, was about 80% complete as of late July 2026: the first of 18 toroidal-field magnets was installed in January, a third magnet was hoisted by late June, and the second 48-ton vacuum-vessel half arrived in May. CFS had targeted all 18 TF magnets by the end of summer 2026, but that window closed without a public confirmation that the full set is installed, so the remaining magnets now sit on the 2027 first-plasma and Q>1 path rather than a finished summer install. ARC, CFS' first commercial plant - officially named the Fall Line Fusion Power Station and sited on 100 acres in Chesterfield County, Virginia - became in April 2026 the first fusion project to file for grid interconnection with PJM, and on June 4, 2026 CFS published a five-paper ARC Physics Basis in the Journal of Plasma Physics projecting ~1.1 GW of fusion power and ~400 MW of net electricity. CFS has also begun monetizing its HTS magnet platform, signing a potentially multi-billion-dollar long-term magnet supply deal with Realta Fusion and launching a SPARC digital twin program with Nvidia and Siemens, and in July 2026 became the first international partner in the UK Atomic Energy Authority's £220M LIBRTI tritium-breeding program to tackle fusion's fuel-supply challenge. On July 30, 2026 CFS closed $1B more from pension and sovereign-wealth funds (bringing total capital to $4B) and named former Moderna CFO Lorence Kim - who led that company's 2018 IPO - as its new chief financial officer, a hire widely read as early positioning for a future CFS public listing.", "summarySource": "https://www.utilitydive.com/news/what-a-billion-dollar-funding-means-for-commonwealth-fusion-systems-and-its/828515/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2018, "headquarters": "Devens, Massachusetts", "country": "US", "ceo": "Bob Mumgaard", "website": "https://cfs.energy", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/commonwealth-fusion-systems.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fusion", "power-generation" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fusion", "name": "Nuclear Fusion", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fusion" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/commonwealth-fusion-systems", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/commonwealth-fusion-systems" }, { "slug": "cosmoleap", "name": "Cosmoleap", "summary": "Cosmoleap (大航跃迁) is a Chinese launch startup founded in February 2024 by Chen Shuguang. The legal parent, Shanghai Dahang Yueqian Aerospace Technology, is registered in Shanghai's Lingang free-trade zone; the Beijing Dahang Yueqian subsidiary does rocket design, R&D, production, and operations. Its product is Yueqian-1 ('Leap-1'), and it remains the first Chinese company to pursue a SpaceX Starship-style 'chopstick' tower-catch recovery instead of landing legs. The roughly 70 m-tall, 4.2 m-diameter, methane-liquid oxygen two-stage rocket is designed to lift about 18,000 kg to LEO when expended or ~12,000 kg with the first stage recovered, on a cluster of nine ~80-ton-class engines reusable up to 20 times. It initially flies the YF-209 engine sourced from CASC's Academy of Aerospace Liquid Propulsion Technology while developing its own 100-ton-class Qingyu-11 methalox engine (targeting ~150 t thrust, deep throttling, and up to 50 reuses); Qingyu-11 cleared a round of core-component tests (torch ignition, low-temperature and liquid-flow testing) in June 2026 and is still moving toward full-system test firing, with no full-system firing reported as of early September 2026. Cosmoleap raised roughly 100 million yuan (~$14M) in November 2024 and a 500 million yuan (~$73M) Series A in April 2026 - about 600 million yuan (~$84M) total - and has disclosed no later round. On March 3, 2026 the company signed a strategic supply-chain cooperation agreement with Beijing Aerospace Guanghua Electronic Technology. The latest public hardware milestone remains the August 19, 2026 combined static-load test of the Yueqian-1 second-stage frame and propellant-tank rear-bottom structure; the company still plans final assembly and integrated testing in the second half of 2026 and a debut orbital flight in 2027, racing domestic tower-catch rival Astronstone.", "summarySource": "https://www.ithome.com/0/991/440.htm", "status": "Private", "founded": 2024, "headquarters": "Shanghai and Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Chen Shuguang (Founder)", "website": "https://www.cosmoleap.cn", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/cosmoleap.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "satellite-mega-constellations" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 3, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/cosmoleap", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/cosmoleap" }, { "slug": "crispr-therapeutics", "name": "CRISPR Therapeutics", "summary": "CRISPR Therapeutics is a gene-editing pioneer co-founded in 2013 by Nobel laureate Emmanuelle Charpentier - co-inventor of CRISPR/Cas9 - alongside Rodger Novak and Shaun Foy. Its flagship, Casgevy (exagamglogene autotemcel), is the world's first approved CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing medicine: a one-time therapy for sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia, developed and commercialized with Vertex Pharmaceuticals (which books the sales; CRISPR keeps ~40% of the economics). Casgevy is approved in 39 countries across North America, Europe, and the Middle East, priced at ~$2.2M per treatment, and in July 2026 the FDA expanded its US label to children as young as two. Commercial uptake has been slower than hoped - constrained by cell-collection bottlenecks - but cumulative patient starts have surpassed 500 and Vertex booked $76M of Casgevy sales in Q2 2026. Beyond Casgevy, CRISPR is pivoting toward in vivo liver gene editing. Lead cardiovascular program CTX310 presented one-year Phase 1a durability data at ESC Congress on August 28, 2026: at the highest dose, mean LDL fell 53% and triglycerides 48% with no treatment-related serious adverse events, and Phase 1b work in severe hypertriglyceridemia and refractory hypercholesterolemia is underway. The pipeline also includes allogeneic CAR-T zugo-cel/CTX112 (autoimmune disease and cancer, including a Lilly pirtobrutinib combination), CTX213 (deviceless beta-cell replacement for type 1 diabetes), and CTX611 (SRSD107), a long-acting Factor XI siRNA with Sirius now in Phase 2 with topline data still due in H2 2026. Q2 2026 cash and investments were $2,364.4M against a narrowed $91.2M net loss. The stock closed at $53.45 on September 9, 2026 (market cap about $5.17B).", "summarySource": "https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/crsp/", "status": "Public", "founded": 2013, "headquarters": "Zug, Switzerland", "country": "CH", "ceo": "Samarth Kulkarni", "website": "https://crisprtx.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/crispr-therapeutics.png", "industrySlugs": [ "biotech" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "biotech", "name": "Biotech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/biotech" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/crispr-therapeutics", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/crispr-therapeutics" }, { "slug": "deep-blue-aerospace", "name": "Deep Blue Aerospace", "summary": "Deep Blue Aerospace (深蓝航天) is a Chinese commercial launch startup built around vertically landing, reusable kerosene-liquid oxygen rockets - positioning itself as one of China's closest analogs to early SpaceX. Founded in 2016 and now headquartered in Wuxi's Xinwu High-tech Zone (with a Beijing R&D office), it employs more than 400 people and has flown a series of VTVL hop tests, most notably a September 2024 high-altitude flight that completed 10 of 11 objectives with ~0.5 m landing accuracy before an anomaly during the final engine shutdown damaged the stage on touchdown. The company is preparing the maiden flight of its medium-lift Nebula-1, which can loft up to 2,000 kg to LEO on nine Thunder-R engines and is designed for first-stage recovery; the first Nebula-1A vehicle was rolled out in March 2026 to a new sea-recovery pad on Lianli Island at Haiyang - which reached full launch-capable status after an integrated test mission on March 30-31, 2026. The originally targeted mid-2026 debut remains unflown as of early September 2026, with launch trackers still listing the demo no earlier than December 2026 and describing the first test profile as suborbital. Deep Blue is also developing the much larger Nebula-2 (25,000+ kg to LEO; Thunder-RS passed a 100-second, 1,297.5 kN static fire in August 2026) and has begun pre-selling suborbital space-tourism tickets for flights targeted in 2027.", "summarySource": "https://www.spacelaunchschedule.com/launch/nebula-1-demo-flight/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2016, "headquarters": "Wuxi, Jiangsu, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Huo Liang", "website": "https://www.dbaspace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/deep-blue-aerospace.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "space-tourism" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-07", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/deep-blue-aerospace", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/deep-blue-aerospace" }, { "slug": "deepseek", "name": "DeepSeek", "summary": "DeepSeek is a Hangzhou-based AI lab, founded in July 2023 by hedge-fund billionaire Liang Wenfeng as a spin-off of his quant fund High-Flyer, that builds frontier open-weight language models at radically low cost. Its January 2025 R1 reasoning model - released under an MIT license and trained for a small fraction of US-lab budgets - briefly made its free chatbot the top US iOS app and triggered a historic market rout in which Nvidia shed roughly $600B in a day. As of September 2026 its flagship is the DeepSeek-V4 family: V4-Pro (1.6T total / 49B active) reached general availability on August 12, 2026 and V4-Flash-0731 is in public API beta, both MIT-licensed with 1M-token context and reportedly trained on Huawei Ascend chips. On August 21 it opened image inputs via DeepSeek-V4-Flash-Vision-Exp, and on August 31 it published those ~305B-parameter weights under an MIT license. DeepSeek serves ~130M monthly active users in China (QuestMobile, May 2026), third among domestic AI apps behind ByteDance's Doubao and Alibaba's Qwen, and monetizes through an API now billed on peak/off-peak rates (V4-Flash $0.22/$0.66 off-peak and $0.44/$1.32 peak per million cache-miss input/output tokens). After operating for three years on High-Flyer's money alone, it closed a record ~$7B maiden round at a ~$52B valuation in June 2026 - with most investors taking non-voting stakes that preserve Liang's control - and as of September 8, 2026 was still finalizing a follow-on raise of about 50B yuan (~$7.4B) at a ~$74B pre-money valuation that sources had expected to close by the end of August, while preparing a mainland IPO targeted for 2027.", "summarySource": "https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/", "status": "Private (controlled by founder Liang Wenfeng; preparing a mainland China IPO)", "founded": 2023, "headquarters": "Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Liang Wenfeng", "website": "https://www.deepseek.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/deepseek.png", "industrySlugs": [ "artificial-intelligence", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 3, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/deepseek", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/deepseek" }, { "slug": "ehang", "name": "EHang", "summary": "EHang is a Guangzhou-based autonomous aerial vehicle company and the regulatory first-mover of the global eVTOL industry. Its pilotless two-passenger EH216-S holds the world's first type certificate (October 2023), standard airworthiness certificate, production certificate, and - since March 2025 - the first air operator certificates for pilotless passenger eVTOLs, all from China's CAAC. Certified operators have flown 3,000+ trial commercial missions in Guangzhou and Hefei with zero accidents, but the public ticketed launch slipped past March 2026 and then lost its H2 2026 date: the August 25, 2026 Q2 report withdrew RMB600 million of 2026 revenue guidance after a late-June light-sport-aircraft accident, unrelated to EHang, slowed CAAC passenger-carrying commercial approvals, including in Hefei. Q2 revenue was RMB77.9 million on 36 eVTOL deliveries (35 EH216 series and one VT35). Internationally, the EH216-S flew publicly at Hong Kong Cyberport on August 28 under Regulatory Sandbox X, U.S. Senator Steve Daines flew the aircraft at EHang's Guangzhou HQ on August 29, and aircraft have now flown in 23 countries. The stock closed at $4.80 on September 8, 2026 (market cap about $364M), after DBS cut the name to Hold and BofA cut its price target to $5.10 following the Q2 miss.", "summarySource": "https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/eh/", "status": "Public (Nasdaq: EH)", "founded": 2014, "headquarters": "Guangzhou, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Huazhi Hu", "website": "https://www.ehang.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/ehang.png", "industrySlugs": [ "evtol", "drone-delivery" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "evtol", "name": "eVTOL", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/evtol" }, { "slug": "drone-delivery", "name": "Drone Delivery", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/drone-delivery" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/ehang", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/ehang" }, { "slug": "eutelsat-oneweb", "name": "Eutelsat OneWeb", "summary": "Eutelsat OneWeb is the LEO connectivity business within Eutelsat Group, operating a globally deployed broadband constellation in ~1,200 km orbit. The business combines a 654-satellite OneWeb network with Eutelsat's GEO fleet to serve government, enterprise, maritime, aviation, and telecom customers. After closing its comprehensive ~EUR 5B equity and debt financing plan in March 2026, Eutelsat reported full-year FY2025-26 results on August 7, 2026: LEO revenue reached EUR 297M (+69.5% YoY), now 25% of group revenue versus about 15% a year earlier, while total group revenue was EUR 1,235.9M and Adjusted EBITDA was EUR 632.4M at a 51.2% margin. On September 10, 2026 at the International Space Summit in Paris, Eutelsat signed an Authorisation to Proceed with Airbus for 229 additional OneWeb satellites (about EUR 1B), taking Airbus OneWeb refresh orders to 669 on top of the 654-satellite Gen 1 fleet; first satellites from the existing 440-unit order are due for delivery in the fourth quarter of 2026, with two dedicated Ariane 64 launches secured for 2027 and 2028. The same day Eutelsat kicked off IRIS2 LEO manufacturing: Aerospacelab as prime for 264 dual Ku/Ka-band platforms under a EUR 2.4B contract, Airbus for 66 military Ka-band satellites to be delivered in 2029, and Thales Alenia Space for payloads on all 330 IRIS2 LEO satellites at about EUR 500M. IRIS2 commercial Ku-band service is now targeted for mid-2032. On September 7, 2026 Eutelsat and Greenland's national telco Tusass launched the EU-, Greenland-, and Denmark-backed Enhanced Satellite Connectivity Project. In India, the Digital Communications Commission approved most TRAI satcom-spectrum recommendations on September 3, 2026, but Cabinet approval, spectrum assignment, and a second-stage security clearance are still required before commercial service.", "summarySource": "https://eutelsat-com.mynewsdesk.com/pressreleases/eutelsat-procures-a-further-oneweb-229-leo-satellites-from-airbus-3466448", "status": "Public (EPA/LSE: ETL)", "founded": 2012, "headquarters": "Paris, France", "country": "FR", "ceo": "Jean-Francois Fallacher (Eutelsat Group CEO)", "website": "https://www.eutelsat.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/eutelsat-oneweb.png", "industrySlugs": [ "satellite-mega-constellations", "telecommunications", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/eutelsat-oneweb", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/eutelsat-oneweb" }, { "slug": "eve-air-mobility", "name": "Eve Air Mobility", "summary": "Eve Air Mobility (Eve Holding) is the Embraer-backed eVTOL developer, spun out of the EmbraerX innovation arm in 2020 and NYSE-listed since a 2022 SPAC merger, with Brazilian BDRs on the B3 since 2025. Its lift-plus-cruise aircraft - eight fixed-pitch lift rotors, a pusher propeller, Embraer fifth-generation fly-by-wire, four passengers plus a pilot, ~100 km range - flew its full-scale engineering prototype for the first time in December 2025, completed a 59-flight hover/low-speed test block in May 2026, and on August 3, 2026 flew its first partial transition flight with the pusher propeller engaged, reaching a stabilized 27 knots. Eve holds one of the industry's largest order pipelines: ~2,700 aircraft under pre-order from 28 customers across 10 countries, plus binding orders from Revo (Sao Paulo) and Japan's AirX. ANAC type certification and entry into service are targeted for 2028 (with FAA expected around the same time), with the aircraft design set to freeze by year-end 2026 ahead of a first crewed conforming-prototype flight in the second half of 2027. CEO Johann Bordais said in August 2026 the company has enough cash to reach certification, with 2026 cash burn tracking toward the low end of its $225M-$275M guidance, and a Taubate, Brazil plant scaling to 480 aircraft/year. It also sells Vector, its urban air-traffic-management software, to 14 customers. On September 4, 2026 Eve published its inaugural Sustainability Report, disclosing a 2025 workforce of 210 plus about 800 Embraer employees on the program.", "summarySource": "https://valorinternational.globo.com/business/news/2026/08/21/embraers-eve-says-cash-covers-flying-car-certification.ghtml", "status": "Public (NYSE: EVEX)", "founded": 2020, "headquarters": "Melbourne, Florida / São José dos Campos, Brazil", "country": "BR", "ceo": "Johann Bordais", "website": "https://www.eveairmobility.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/eve-air-mobility.png", "industrySlugs": [ "evtol", "civilian-aircrafts" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "evtol", "name": "eVTOL", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/evtol" }, { "slug": "civilian-aircrafts", "name": "Civilian Aircrafts", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/civilian-aircrafts" } ], "parent": { "name": "Embraer S.A.", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "majority-owned", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Air_Mobility" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 3, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 2, "missed": 0, "total": 3 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-06", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/eve-air-mobility", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/eve-air-mobility" }, { "slug": "figure-ai", "name": "Figure AI", "summary": "Figure AI is a San Jose robotics company building general-purpose humanoid robots and the Helix AI stack that powers them, and - following its $39B Series C in September 2025 - the best-capitalized pure-play humanoid company in the world. Its current platform, Figure 03, is in early commercial deployment: after an 11-month Figure 02 program at BMW's Spartanburg plant, BMW brought Figure 03 back on June 25, 2026 for logistics sequencing, and as of a late-August 2026 plant report BMW was still treating that work as a validation campaign rather than quoting fleet numbers. Catalyst Brands (JCPenney's parent) signed in May 2026 to deploy Figure 03 fleets at its Reno logistics center. The Helix 02 vision-language-action stack has demonstrated full 8-hour and 200-hour autonomous package-sorting runs, while BotQ has scaled to one Figure 03 per hour and crossed 1,000 robots produced by July 23, 2026. On August 25, 2026 Figure launched Index, a crowdsourced physical-video app that while in stealth crossed 264,000 downloads, 16 million videos and $15 million paid to Creators. On September 3, 2026 Figure signed a multi-year Nscale compute partnership with an initial $3.5 billion commitment (intent to scale past $6 billion) for up to 100,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs starting in H2 2027 at Nscale's Barstow, Texas site. Figure is separately contesting a wrongful-termination lawsuit from a former safety engineer, filed in November 2025; the case remains unresolved.", "summarySource": "https://www.figure.ai/news/figure-and-nscale-sign-strategic-partnership", "status": "Private", "founded": 2022, "headquarters": "San Jose, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Brett Adcock", "website": "https://www.figure.ai", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/figure-ai.png", "industrySlugs": [ "humanoid-robots", "industrial-automation", "warehouse-automation" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "humanoid-robots", "name": "Humanoid Robots", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/humanoid-robots" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/figure-ai", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/figure-ai" }, { "slug": "firefly", "name": "Firefly Aerospace", "summary": "Firefly Aerospace is a public space and defense company that launches the Alpha small-lift rocket, is co-developing the Eclipse medium-lift vehicle with Northrop Grumman, flies Blue Ghost lunar landers, and builds Elytra orbital vehicles for maneuvering, communications, imaging, and other cislunar services. After becoming the first commercial company to complete a fully successful Moon landing, Firefly expanded further into defense software and data systems through its SciTec acquisition, which won a U.S. Space Force Space-Based Interceptor OTA agreement in May 2026 and a $5.5M Air Force CBC2 data-fusion option in June 2026 as part of the Golden Dome architecture. Firefly doubled its Cedar Park campus to 144,000 sq ft to industrialize Blue Ghost and Elytra production, closed a 12M-share follow-on at $48/share on June 1, 2026, and - per June 23, 2026 Reuters reporting - is set to secure a ~$110M EXIM loan to fund further Texas production expansion (the application was still in EXIM's public-comment process as of a July 27, 2026 Federal Register notice). In July 2026 Firefly also won a $13M NASA JPL subcontract - the first out of its new Gloworks innovation lab - to build the aeroshell for NASA's SkyFall Mars helicopter mission. On August 11, 2026 Firefly reported record Q2 2026 revenue of $117.7M (up 659% YoY, its first quarter above $100M), ~$1.5B backlog, and $940.3M of liquidity, and reaffirmed full-year guidance of $420M-$450M. The first full Alpha Block II flight (Flight 8) remains targeted for Q4 2026, but Blue Ghost Mission 2 (Riders 2 the Dark) has slipped from a NET December 2026 window to no earlier than 2027, pending spacecraft delivery to Florida and a confirmed launch window. SciTec also won a $93.7M Space Force radar-digitization contract in August, and Firefly extended its Lockheed Martin multi-launch deal to up to 25 Alpha missions through 2031.", "summarySource": "https://fireflyspace.com/missions/blue-ghost-mission-2/", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: FLY)", "founded": 2014, "headquarters": "Leander, Texas", "country": "US", "ceo": "Jason Kim", "website": "https://fireflyspace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/firefly.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "orbital-economy", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/firefly", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/firefly" }, { "slug": "form-energy", "name": "Form Energy", "summary": "Form Energy, founded in 2017 by former Tesla energy chief Mateo Jaramillo, MIT professor Yet-Ming Chiang, Ted Wiley, Billy Woodford and Marco Ferrara, is building the storage technology that lithium-ion cannot economically reach: a 100-hour battery. Its iron-air cells run on reversible rusting, oxidising iron with air from the atmosphere to discharge and converting the rust back to iron to charge, using materials so cheap the company claims a cost per kilowatt-hour a fraction of lithium-ion's. That makes multi-day storage viable, the duration Jaramillo argues is where batteries stop shaving peaks and start replacing thermal power plants. The company manufactures at Form Factory 1, a 550,000 square-foot plant in Weirton, West Virginia built on a former tin mill site, now in production. The first commercial system, a 1.5 MW / 150 MWh project with Great River Energy in Cambridge, Minnesota, is still unfinished: Great River Energy's May 2026 integrated resource plan said structures and balance of plant were substantially complete, remaining modules were still awaited, and commercial operation is targeted by the end of 2026. Demand is now driven as much by AI data centers as by utilities. Form has more than 80 GWh of commercial projects under agreement, including a 300 MW / 30 GWh system with Google and Xcel Energy that Xcel calls the largest battery project by energy capacity ever announced, a 12 GWh capacity agreement with Crusoe for AI data centers starting in 2027, and its first deployment outside the US, a 1 GWh project with FuturEnergy Ireland. A separate 85 MW / 8.5 GWh project at a former mill in Lincoln, Maine, backed by nearly $150M in DOE grid-resilience funds, is slated to start construction in 2028. Form has raised more than $2B, including a $750M Series G led by T. Rowe Price that closed in August 2026 (a down round at about $1.75B pre-money), added Wes Sloan (ex-Panasonic Energy Nevada) as COO and Navneet Govil as CFO, has picked JPMorgan and Jefferies to lead its IPO, and plans to go public in 2027. Jaramillo has said the company expects its first meaningful revenues in 2026 and that factory output is allocated into late 2028 or 2029.", "summarySource": "https://greatriverenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026-2040-GRE-IRP-FINAL-4-24-2026.pdf", "status": "Private (Series G closed August 2026; listing targeted for 2027)", "founded": 2017, "headquarters": "Somerville, Massachusetts", "country": "US", "ceo": "Mateo Jaramillo", "website": "https://formenergy.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/form-energy.png", "industrySlugs": [ "energy-storage", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 8, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 3 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/form-energy", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/form-energy" }, { "slug": "galactic-energy", "name": "Galactic Energy", "summary": "Galactic Energy (Beijing Xinghe Power) is one of China's leading commercial launch companies and the most prolific private launch provider in the country. Its small solid-fuel Ceres-1 - flying from both land and a sea platform (Ceres-1S) - has reached orbit 23 times with 21 successes, deploying around 89 satellites since 2020, but it has not flown again since the January 15, 2026 Ceres-1S Y7 sea launch. The larger solid Ceres-2 failed on its January 2026 debut; Galactic Energy concluded in June 2026 that a design flaw in the first stage's nozzle throat liner caused the failure and has not announced a return-to-flight date. The partially reusable kerosene-liquid oxygen Pallas-1 flew its debut mission on September 1, 2026, reaching its planned sun-synchronous test orbit with a dummy payload and no first-stage recovery attempt, the first step in a three-step plan toward routine booster reuse. Galactic Energy closed a 2.4 billion yuan (~$336M) Series D in September 2025, bringing disclosed funding to roughly $410M, is raising a further round (at least 400 million yuan / ~$59M committed as of July 2026) to fund follow-on Pallas-1 flights, was shortlisted in June 2026 as a candidate launch provider for China's Qingzhou cargo spacecraft that will resupply the Tiangong space station, and remains among the commercial launch firms in Shanghai STAR Market IPO counseling.", "summarySource": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres-1", "status": "Private", "founded": 2018, "headquarters": "Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Liu Baiqi", "website": "https://www.galactic-energy.cn", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/galactic-energy.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "space-stations", "satellite-mega-constellations" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "space-stations", "name": "Space Stations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/space-stations" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/galactic-energy", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/galactic-energy" }, { "slug": "ge-hitachi", "name": "GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy", "summary": "GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GVH, formerly GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy) is the Wilmington, North Carolina-based nuclear alliance formed by GE (60%, now GE Vernova) and Hitachi (40%) in 2007, combining reactor design, services for the global boiling-water-reactor fleet, and fuel manufacturing through Global Nuclear Fuel. Its flagship BWRX-300 small modular reactor - a 300 MWe natural-circulation design derived from the NRC-certified ESBWR - is the first grid-scale SMR under construction in the Western world, with Ontario Power Generation building the first of four units at Darlington for service by the end of 2030. In the US, TVA's Clinch River construction permit application cleared its NRC staff safety evaluation in June 2026, backed by a $400M DOE award, and the NRC now targets a Fall 2026 commissioner decision after an August 13 mandatory hearing; in March 2026 the US and Japanese governments announced up to $40B to deploy up to 10 BWRX-300s (3 GW) in Tennessee and Alabama under the US–Japan strategic investment framework. The order book extends across Poland (ORLEN Synthos Green Energy, including a June 2026 agreement for up to six units at Włocławek), the UK (Generic Design Assessment completed December 2025; an SGE-led team bid in mid-2026 to build 14 units), a new US project with Elementl Power in Meigs County, Ohio (up to five units, agreed June 2026), Estonia (where parliament passed a comprehensive nuclear energy law in June 2026), Hungary, Saskatchewan, Lithuania (MOU signed February 2026) and Bulgaria (JV letter of intent signed December 2025), plus a March 2026 MOU with Hitachi to explore Southeast Asia. GVH lost Sweden's first new-nuclear competition in June 2026, when Vattenfall's Videberg Kraft venture picked Rolls-Royce SMR over the BWRX-300 for its Ringhals project, but returned to the Swedish market on September 3, 2026 when nuclear technology company Studsvik selected GVH and Samsung C&T to advance a separate proposed four-unit, 1.2 GW BWRX-300 project. GVH also co-developed the Natrium sodium-cooled fast reactor with TerraPower, which began construction in Wyoming in 2026. Jason Cooper became President & CEO in January 2026. GE Vernova's Q2 2026 10-Q separately disclosed Nuclear Power segment revenue for the first time - $1,575M for H1 2026, up from $1,310M in H1 2025.", "summarySource": "https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/advanced/who-were-working-with/applicant-projects/clinch-river", "status": "Subsidiary of GE Vernova (JV with Hitachi)", "founded": 2007, "headquarters": "Wilmington, North Carolina", "country": "US", "ceo": "Jason Cooper", "website": "https://www.gevernova.com/nuclear", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/ge-hitachi.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fission", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fission", "name": "Nuclear Fission", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fission" } ], "parent": { "name": "GE Vernova & Hitachi", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "joint-venture", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Vernova_Hitachi_Nuclear_Energy" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 8, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 0, "missed": 1, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/ge-hitachi", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/ge-hitachi" }, { "slug": "general-atomics-aeronautical", "name": "General Atomics Aeronautical Systems", "summary": "General Atomics Aeronautical Systems built the armed drone as a category. The Predator it flew over the Balkans in 1995 and the MQ-9 Reaper that followed defined two decades of American air power, and the Predator line has now logged more than nine million flight hours. In 2026 the company converted that incumbency into the next generation: on June 17 the Air Force awarded GA-ASI a production contract for the FQ-42A, one of the first aircraft in history to carry the FQ designation, F for fighter and Q for uncrewed, alongside Anduril's FQ-44A. The two together are meant to deliver at least 150 Collaborative Combat Aircraft by the end of the decade at a target cost near $30 million each, against an eventual program goal of roughly 1,000 aircraft. GA-ASI got there fast and not smoothly: the YFQ-42A prototype flew 15 months after contract award in August 2025, was destroyed on April 6, 2026 when an autopilot miscalculated the aircraft's weight and center of gravity after takeoff, and was flying again on May 21 after a joint safety review and a software fix. By July 2026 the main production facility had been converted to build six CCAs a month. The rest of the business is the export franchise: MQ-9B SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian are under contract with Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, Japan, Poland, Taiwan, the UK and US SOCOM, with roughly $12 billion of signed deals, and India alone ordered 31 aircraft in October 2024. A new front opened in August 2026 when GA-ASI unveiled Wildfire, a clean-sheet MQ-9 successor pitched at the Pentagon's Massed Modular Aircraft competition; after Iran combat losses reached about 45 Reapers, the Air Force on September 3-4 directed an acceleration targeting about $10 million a copy, at least 180 aircraft, a prototype within a year of contract, and fielding at scale within three years, as soon as 2029, versus the original goal of 20 mission-ready aircraft by fiscal 2031. The strategic exposure is one layer up the stack: the Air Force competes CCA mission autonomy separately from the airframe, and while General Atomics holds one of six baseline six-year autonomy contracts, the three companies funded for the first competitive phase are Anduril, RTX Collins Aerospace and Shield AI. Collins' Sidekick software, not GA-ASI's own, is what has been flying the YFQ-42A.", "summarySource": "https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-new-low-cost-drone-program-heavy-mq-9-losses-iran/", "status": "Private", "founded": 1993, "headquarters": "Poway, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Linden Blue", "website": "https://www.ga-asi.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/general-atomics-aeronautical.png", "industrySlugs": [ "defense", "unmanned-aircraft" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": { "name": "General Atomics", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "subsidiary", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_Aeronautical_Systems" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/general-atomics-aeronautical", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/general-atomics-aeronautical" }, { "slug": "google-deepmind", "name": "Google DeepMind", "summary": "Google DeepMind is Alphabet's consolidated artificial-intelligence research lab, formed in April 2023 by merging the original DeepMind (founded in London in 2010, acquired by Google in 2014) with Google Brain. Co-founder and Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis stepped down as CEO on August 5, 2026, moving to Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet to focus on long-term AGI research and Isomorphic Labs; Koray Kavukcuoglu, an SVP reporting directly to Sundar Pichai, now runs day-to-day operations and the Gemini roadmap. The lab builds the Gemini family of frontier multimodal models - which powers the Gemini app (900M+ monthly active users as of mid-2026), Google Search's AI Mode and AI Overviews, Google Cloud's Vertex AI, and, via a 2026 partnership, Apple's next-generation Siri. Beyond consumer AI, DeepMind pioneered game-playing systems (AlphaGo, AlphaZero) and scientific breakthroughs including AlphaFold - whose protein-structure database has been used by 3M+ researchers and earned Hassabis and John Jumper the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry - plus AlphaGenome, AlphaEvolve, Veo and Genie world models, and Gemini Robotics. Its drug-discovery spinout Isomorphic Labs is preparing first-in-human oncology trials. The August leadership change follows a stretch of talent departures (Jumper among them) and delays shipping Gemini 3.5 Pro, and coincided with Google chief scientist Jeff Dean also leaving the company after 27 years.", "summarySource": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/05/google-chief-scientist-jeff-dean-leaving-company-after-27-years.html", "status": "Alphabet subsidiary (Google's consolidated AI research division; not separately traded)", "founded": 2010, "headquarters": "London, United Kingdom", "country": "GB", "ceo": "Koray Kavukcuoglu (SVP, day-to-day operations & Gemini roadmap, reporting to Sundar Pichai); Demis Hassabis moved to Chair of Google DeepMind & Alphabet Chief Scientist on Aug 5, 2026", "website": "https://deepmind.google", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/google-deepmind.png", "industrySlugs": [ "artificial-intelligence", "ai-compute", "biotech", "healthcare", "robotics" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" }, { "slug": "biotech", "name": "Biotech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/biotech" } ], "parent": { "name": "Alphabet Inc.", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "subsidiary", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_DeepMind" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/google-deepmind", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/google-deepmind" }, { "slug": "heart-aerospace", "name": "Heart Aerospace", "summary": "Heart Aerospace is developing the ES-30, a 30-seat clean-sheet hybrid-electric regional aircraft for short-haul routes from smaller airports. Founded in Sweden and now headquartered in Torrance, California, the company is following an iterative development path built around the Heart X1 and X2 prototypes while bringing more of its batteries, actuation systems, software, and hybrid-electric hardware in-house. On August 12, 2026 the all-electric X1 demonstrator completed its piloted maiden flight at Plattsburgh International Airport in New York, a 27-minute flight that made X1 the largest battery-electric aircraft ever flown and advances technology feeding into the ES-30 program. Heart's own site now states $190M in mission-aligned capital, 250 firm aircraft orders plus 120 options and purchase rights, and a $9.4B order book, with ES-30 type certification still targeted for 2031 after the earlier 2029 goal slipped.", "summarySource": "https://heartaerospace.com/about/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2018, "headquarters": "Torrance, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Anders Forslund", "website": "https://heartaerospace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/heart-aerospace.png", "industrySlugs": [ "civilian-aircrafts" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "civilian-aircrafts", "name": "Civilian Aircrafts", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/civilian-aircrafts" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-06", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/heart-aerospace", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/heart-aerospace" }, { "slug": "helion-energy", "name": "Helion Energy", "summary": "Helion Energy is building fusion generators aimed at producing commercial electricity from fusion. Its Polaris prototype began operating in late 2024 and in February 2026 became the first privately developed fusion machine to demonstrate measurable deuterium-tritium fusion at 150 million degrees Celsius. Helion is now advancing Orion in Malaga, Washington, where site work began in 2025 and generator-building construction is underway after Washington State issued the world's first fusion-plant licenses in June 2026. The company's own Orion page now says the plant is designed to meet the 2023 Microsoft PPA for at least 50 MW, with initial operations beginning in 2028; public-affairs director Jackie Siebens said at FusionX that Helion will not have 50 MW at full operation in 2028 and that the Microsoft contract requires Orion to be connected to the grid and begin operations by the end of 2028, with full power not expected before 2029 or 2030. A smaller Tiny Merge testbed is still being integrated at Everett after an August 28, 2026 first vacuum pump-down; the end-of-summer 2026 online target was not met. On September 8, 2026 Helion opened a downtown Seattle office for its business team and CEO David Kirtley said headcount has grown to 800. On June 4, 2026 Helion closed a $465M Series G led by Thrive Capital at a $15.5B post-money valuation, lifting total funding to roughly $1.5B. OpenAI remains in unsigned, advanced talks to buy fusion power from Helion at gigawatt scale, a negotiation that prompted Sam Altman to step down as Helion board chair on March 23, 2026.", "summarySource": "https://www.helionenergy.com/orion", "status": "Private", "founded": 2013, "headquarters": "Everett, Washington", "country": "US", "ceo": "David Kirtley", "website": "https://www.helionenergy.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/helion-energy.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fusion", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fusion", "name": "Nuclear Fusion", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fusion" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/helion-energy", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/helion-energy" }, { "slug": "helsing", "name": "Helsing", "summary": "Helsing is a Munich-based defense technology company founded in 2021 by Torsten Reil, Gundbert Scherf and Niklas Köhler, chaired and heavily backed by Spotify founder Daniel Ek. It began as an AI-software company and has expanded into a full-stack, multi-domain defense manufacturer: the HX-2 X-wing strike drone, the Altra reconnaissance-strike software platform, the Centaur AI fighter pilot (which flew a Saab Gripen E in world-first beyond-visual-range trials in June 2025), the Cirra electronic-warfare AI for Germany's Eurofighter EK, the SG-1 Fathom underwater glider running the Lura acoustic AI, and the CA-1 Europa autonomous combat aircraft being built by its subsidiary Grob Aircraft. Its drones are combat-deployed in Ukraine, where it says it delivers several hundred HX-2s per month against a 6,000-unit order, though Bloomberg and WELT reporting has questioned the drone's frontline accuracy and pricing. Riding Europe's rearmament wave, Helsing won an initial €269M Bundeswehr loitering-munition contract in February 2026 (framework up to ~€1B over seven years) and a €258M AI electronic-warfare contract for the Eurofighter with Saab Germany. In the UK, its Plymouth 'Resilience Factory' builds SG-1 Fathom gliders for the Royal Navy's Atlantic Bastion undersea-surveillance program under a £350M investment commitment. Acquisitions of Grob Aircraft (June 2025), Australian AUV maker Blue Ocean (October 2025), and Barcelona-based quadruped-robot maker Keybotic (January 2026) gave it aircraft, maritime, and ground-robotics manufacturing muscle. In July 2026 it closed a $1.8B Series E at an ~$18B valuation led by Dragoneer with Lightspeed - Europe's largest defense-startup round - making it Germany's most valuable startup while remaining predominantly European-owned. Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force signed an initial HX-2 agreement in May 2026, and in the US Army's Project Flytrap 5.0 exercise in Lithuania the HX-2 scored an 88% hit rate (15 of 17), even as a WELT report citing a Ukrainian defense-ministry document put its Donbas combat hit rate at just 35.7% (5 of 14) - a discrepancy Helsing disputes, citing near-100% hit rates in German, UK and Kenyan trials. The Series E also funds Helsing's first US plant, a $50M 'Resilience Factory' in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and in July 2026 Germany moved to award Helsing a €580M contract to build the CFSN combat-cloud software salvaged from the collapsed Franco-German FCAS fighter program; the company also named former Ukrainian deputy defense minister Andriy Shevchenko as Managing Director for Ukraine. Helsing is also pushing into space: in December 2025 it joined Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and Hensoldt to develop a sovereign European ISR/targeting satellite constellation targeted for 2029, and in May 2026 OHB joined that group to form the 'KIRK' joint venture for tactical space-based reconnaissance. The next proof points are the CA-1 Europa's first flight (targeted March 2027), Fathom's full operational capability with the Royal Navy by end-2026, and whether Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force converts September 2026 HX-2 field tests into a firm buy. In June 2026 Helsing also stood up Area 9, its advanced research division, and unveiled RX-1, a European-built quadruped research platform it is giving to universities rather than selling.", "summarySource": "https://helsing.ai/newsroom/helsing-unveils-area-9-and-launches-rx-1-its-first-european-robotics-research-platform", "status": "Private", "founded": 2021, "headquarters": "Munich, Germany", "country": "DE", "ceo": "Torsten Reil & Gundbert Scherf (co-CEOs)", "website": "https://helsing.ai", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/helsing.png", "industrySlugs": [ "defense", "military-drones", "autonomous-systems" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 8, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/helsing", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/helsing" }, { "slug": "hermeus", "name": "Hermeus", "summary": "Hermeus is a defense aviation company focused on rapidly designing, building, and flight-testing high-Mach and hypersonic aircraft for national-security missions. Its Quarterhorse program is progressing through a series of unmanned demonstrators to unlock high-speed flight - Mk 2.1 broke the sound barrier on May 26, 2026 in its third flight from Spaceport America, becoming the first privately-developed unmanned supersonic jet, then extended its top speed to Mach 1.6 on a fourth flight in mid-July 2026, beyond its previously announced design range of roughly Mach 1.25-1.50 - and the Chimera engine architecture underpins Darkhorse, the reusable hypersonic UAS Hermeus aims to field for defense customers. On September 9, 2026 the company unveiled Ramjet-X, a low-cost expendable ramjet vehicle launched from Quarterhorse for high-Mach Flight Test as a Service, with engine tests at HEAT in Jacksonville and integrated vehicle testing planned for 2027. The company is now backed by a $1B post-money valuation, a $350M Series C closed in April 2026, and a Defense Innovation Unit contract scaled to a $219M ceiling in late May 2026 to demonstrate high-Mach flight and high-speed payload release at speeds up to Mach 3. In late July 2026, Quarterhorse Mk 2.1 completed its fifth flight overall and its first DIU-backed unmanned stores-separation test, safely releasing an external payload in flight. On September 3, 2026 Hermeus selected Anduril Lattice for Mission Autonomy on Quarterhorse Mk 2, with a first combined flight planned for 2027, and Anduril said Hermeus will soon fly its second aircraft, Mk 2.2, built in under a year and targeting Mach 2-plus with a new pre-cooler and variable-geometry inlet. In a May 2026 leadership transition effective June 1, 2026, president Zach Shore became CEO while co-founder AJ Piplica moved to executive chairman.", "summarySource": "https://www.hermeus.com/article/hermeus-unveils-ramjet-x", "status": "Private", "founded": 2018, "headquarters": "El Segundo, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Zach Shore", "website": "https://www.hermeus.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/hermeus.png", "industrySlugs": [ "civilian-aircrafts", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "civilian-aircrafts", "name": "Civilian Aircrafts", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/civilian-aircrafts" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/hermeus", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/hermeus" }, { "slug": "holtec", "name": "Holtec International", "summary": "Holtec International is a vertically integrated nuclear technology and services company whose core businesses include used-fuel storage and transport systems, plant decommissioning, manufacturing, and nuclear project execution. Its flagship growth program is the restart of the Palisades plant in Michigan, which would be the first U.S. nuclear plant to return from decommissioning to operations status: on August 30, 2026 Holtec began loading fuel into the 204-assembly reactor core, the most visible physical milestone yet, though extensive tests and inspections and a firm restart date still lie ahead. Its other flagship program is the SMR-300 small modular reactor platform, which Holtec is advancing at Palisades and in the UK with EDF. Holtec is also pursuing a large SMR-300 program in India - where a March 2025 U.S. DOE 10CFR810 authorization lets it share the design with partners Tata Consulting Engineers, Larsen & Toubro, and its Holtec Asia subsidiary - with a February 2026 plan to build up to 200 SMR-300s from an expanded manufacturing hub in Gujarat, and in Rwanda, where a May 2026 Comprehensive Development Agreement with the country's Atomic Energy Board targets up to roughly 5 GW of capacity, Holtec's first sub-Saharan African market. After a confidential filing in February 2026, Holtec publicly filed a Form S-1 on July 10, 2026 for a Nasdaq / Nasdaq Texas IPO under the ticker HNUC - the S-1 disclosing $989M of revenue for the 12 months ended March 31, 2026 - in an offering that Renaissance Capital estimates could raise about $2 billion (with press reporting on overall company valuation running as high as roughly $10 billion). An S-1/A amendment filed August 21, 2026 updated the offering's financials through the six months ended June 30, 2026, disclosing $269.9M of revenue (down from $286.6M in the first half of 2025) alongside higher gross operating profit of $118.5M (up from $78.8M). On September 8, 2026 Holtec launched the IPO roadshow at $15 to $18 per share for 50 million Class A shares (up to $900 million, plus a 7.5 million-share greenshoe), targeting a valuation of up to $10.2 billion. Holtec's SMR-300 pipeline now spans Palisades, the Green River, Utah revival project, a newly cleared Oyster Creek, New Jersey site (NRC approved the plant's license termination plan on July 30, 2026, opening the way for four more SMR-300 units there), the Cottam, UK proposal with EDF, and Rwanda - and on August 4, 2026 Holtec signed a non-binding memorandum of agreement with Entergy and Hyundai Engineering & Construction to evaluate further SMR-300 projects across Entergy's Gulf South territory.", "summarySource": "https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/09/08/3357439/0/en/holtec-nuclear-corporation-announces-launch-of-initial-public-offering.html", "status": "Active", "founded": 1986, "headquarters": "Jupiter, Florida", "country": "US", "ceo": "Kris Singh", "website": "https://holtecinternational.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/holtec.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fission", "energy-storage", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fission", "name": "Nuclear Fission", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fission" }, { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/holtec", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/holtec" }, { "slug": "impulse-space", "name": "Impulse Space", "summary": "Impulse Space builds the vehicles that move payloads once a rocket has done its job, a business the company calls in-space mobility. It was founded in 2021 by Tom Mueller, SpaceX's founding propulsion engineer and the architect of the Merlin engine, and sells two vehicles: Mira, a highly maneuverable 300 kg-class orbital transfer and hosting spacecraft that has flown three missions since November 2023, and Helios, a high-energy kick stage powered by the 67 kN Deneb methalox engine that is designed to carry a payload from low Earth orbit to geostationary orbit in under a day rather than the months an electric tug needs. In July 2026 the U.S. Space Force awarded Impulse a National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 contract, making it the first upper-stage provider ever to hold prime status in a program historically reserved for rocket companies, and in June 2026 the company raised a $500 million Series D that took total funding past $1 billion. Mira has now completed two close-proximity campaigns: the December 2025 Remora autonomous rendezvous with Starfish Space, and a July 2026 flyby in which the LEO Express 2 Mira closed to less than 200 meters of the LEO Express 3 Mira, announced on September 8, 2026. A fourth Mira flight, LEO Express 4, is manifested on SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 rideshare as an Impulse-only checkout of the upgraded vehicle. Helios is now targeted for its inaugural flight in 2027, and a third product line, the in-house Electra electric propulsion system, debuts alongside it.", "summarySource": "https://www.impulsespace.com/updates/a-family-reunion-the-leo-2-and-leo-3-flyby", "status": "Active", "founded": 2021, "headquarters": "Redondo Beach, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Tom Mueller", "website": "https://www.impulsespace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/impulse-space.png", "industrySlugs": [ "orbital-economy", "defense", "satellites" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/impulse-space", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/impulse-space" }, { "slug": "inversion-space", "name": "Inversion Space", "summary": "Inversion Space, founded in 2021 by Boston University students Justin Fiaschetti and Austin Briggs and backed by Y Combinator, builds reentry vehicles that park cargo in orbit and bring it down on demand, inverting the usual direction of space logistics: instead of launching goods when they are needed, the goods wait overhead and come back within an hour of the request. Its flagship vehicle, Arc, was unveiled on October 1, 2025 as a fully reusable lifting body about four feet across and eight feet tall that stores roughly 500 lb of payload on orbit for up to five years, survives reentry above Mach 20, steers more than 1,000 km of cross-range, and touches down under an autonomously guided parachute within about 50 feet of a target, needing no runway and using non-toxic propellants so crews can approach it immediately. The company has raised roughly $54 million, most of it a $44 million Series A in November 2024 co-led by Spark Capital and Adjacent with Lockheed Martin Ventures and Kindred Ventures, on top of a $71 million STRATFI award from AFRL and SpaceWERX in September 2024. Its pathfinder, the 20-inch Ray capsule, launched on SpaceX's Transporter-12 in January 2025 and validated avionics, power, propulsion, and separation, but a short circuit kept the deorbit engine from igniting, so it never flew the reentry it was built to demonstrate. Defense demand has arrived ahead of the flight record: Inversion was selected into Kratos' $1.45 billion MACH-TB 2.0 hypersonic test program in September 2025 and joined Anduril's team for the Space Force's Golden Dome space-based interceptor work in May 2026. It operates a 55,000-square-foot Los Angeles factory and a five-acre Mojave test site with about 60 employees, and the whole thesis now rests on flying Arc for the first time.", "summarySource": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_Space", "status": "Private", "founded": 2021, "headquarters": "Los Angeles, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Justin Fiaschetti", "website": "https://www.inversionspace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/inversion-space.png", "industrySlugs": [ "orbital-economy", "defense", "hypersonics" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 0, "missed": 1, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-08-29", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/inversion-space", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/inversion-space" }, { "slug": "ispace", "name": "iSpace (Interstellar Glory)", "summary": "iSpace (Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology), founded in 2016 by former state rocket designer Peng Xiaobo, made history in July 2019 when its solid-fuel Hyperbola-1 became the first Chinese privately developed rocket to reach orbit. Hyperbola-1's track record has been uneven (four successes in eight flights, most recently in July 2025), and the company's future now rests on Hyperbola-3, a partially reusable methane-liquid oxygen rocket sized between 8.5 and 13.4 tonnes to LEO. By mid-2026 Hyperbola-3's JD-2 engines and both stages had been qualified for flight, a pathfinder had completed Qinglan drone-ship sea trials off Yangjiang, and on August 14, 2026 the 5.2 m payload fairing passed its final static-load test, putting the vehicle in flight-ready condition ahead of a first orbital flight with a sea-recovery attempt still targeted for late 2026 (year-end / Q4) at Wenchang. After a record 5.037 billion yuan (~$729.6M) Series D++ in February 2026 - the largest disclosed funding round by any Chinese launch startup - iSpace is raising a Series E round reported at roughly 7 billion yuan (~$980M), whose first tranche of nearly 1 billion yuan (~$140M) closed in August 2026, led by bank-affiliated asset managers, to fund Hyperbola-3 production, sea-recovery buildout, a new Chengdu production base (targeted for completion by end of 2026 and official production in 2027), and early work on the heavy-lift Hyperbola-9. In April 2026 it also registered a wholly owned Shanghai space-based computing subsidiary (100 million yuan registered capital) as a first step from rocket manufacturing toward in-orbit compute services. It remains China's best-funded private launch firm and is reportedly targeting a Shanghai STAR Market IPO in the second half of 2027, after Hyperbola-3's debut.", "summarySource": "https://www.ithome.com/0/985/657.htm", "status": "Private", "founded": 2016, "headquarters": "Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Peng Xiaobo", "website": "https://www.i-space.com.cn", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/ispace.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-07", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/ispace", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/ispace" }, { "slug": "joby-aviation", "name": "Joby Aviation", "summary": "Joby Aviation is a California-based transportation company developing a piloted, all-electric air taxi for commercial passenger service. The company completed FAA Stage 4 certification in late March 2026 and is now in Stage 5 (Type Inspection Authorization), the final gate before U.S. commercial type certification, which analysts expect in late 2026. As of the July 31, 2026 shareholder letter, Stage 5 Show & Verify stood at Joby 20% / FAA 10%, with five conforming aircraft flying and 12 more in production. On July 7, 2026 the UAE's GCAA certified its flagship Dubai vertiport (VDX at DXB) as the world's first certified commercial eVTOL vertiport, clearing the network for a public launch directed before year-end, and in early August 2026 Joby established a U.S. hub at Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport. On September 10, 2026 Joby said Texas kicked off the first White House-backed eIPP flights, a week-long Dallas-Fort Worth campaign through September 14, and that its autonomous J208 converted Cessna Caravan had begun a month-long 10-state supervised-autonomy tour using the Xwing stack. The company reported Q2 2026 revenue of $38.6M (beating estimates), ended the quarter with $2.3B in cash and short-term investments, and raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $115M-$125M; Q2 remains the latest reported quarter. On August 11, 2026 Joby agreed to acquire Ohio-based defense firm Resonant Sciences for about $500M (close still expected in H1 2027) and launched a $750M at-the-market equity program with no disclosed draw. Shares closed at $6.84 on September 8 (market cap about $6.77B).", "summarySource": "https://www.jobyaviation.com/news/joby-autonomous-aircraft-begins-cross-country-tour", "status": "Public (NYSE: JOBY)", "founded": 2009, "headquarters": "Santa Cruz, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "JoeBen Bevirt", "website": "https://www.jobyaviation.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/joby-aviation.png", "industrySlugs": [ "evtol", "civilian-aircrafts", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "evtol", "name": "eVTOL", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/evtol" }, { "slug": "civilian-aircrafts", "name": "Civilian Aircrafts", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/civilian-aircrafts" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/joby-aviation", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/joby-aviation" }, { "slug": "k2-space", "name": "K2 Space", "summary": "K2 Space builds deliberately large satellites at a moment when the rest of the industry is shrinking them, on the argument that power, not mass, is what limits what a spacecraft can do. Its Mega Class bus carries up to 3,000 kg of payload and tens of kilowatts of power for a list price around $15 million, roughly ten times the power of a typical constellation satellite, and its 20 kW krypton Hall-effect thruster is the most powerful electric thruster flown in space. Founded in 2022 by brothers Karan and Neel Kunjur, both former SpaceX engineers, the company flew a subsystem demonstrator called Heritage in January 2025 and launched its first full Mega Class satellite, Gravitas, on March 30, 2026. Gravitas carried customer payloads and used its own thruster to raise itself from low Earth orbit to medium Earth orbit, a climb Breaking Defense reported as complete in a self-funded demonstration; K2's site still lists the spacecraft as operational on orbit. In 2026 it went from startup to supplier on three of the biggest programs in the sector: an initial SES meoSphere MEO order (SpaceNews: 28 satellites; K2's Series D release: a 30-satellite first tranche), Mega Class buses for the Anduril-led space-based interceptor team on Golden Dome, and its first Pentagon program of record as bus provider for the Space Force's Protected Tactical Satcom-Global. A $500 million Series D on July 30, 2026 at a $6.8 billion valuation, more than double the December 2025 mark, funds the move from one satellite at a time to a 180,000 square foot Torrance factory rated at up to 100 large satellites a year. Next up is Trinity, three satellites into three orbits, listed for Q2 2027.", "summarySource": "https://breakingdefense.com/2026/08/k2-tapped-to-host-space-force-satellite-laser-links-tests/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2022, "headquarters": "Torrance, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Karan Kunjur", "website": "https://www.k2space.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/k2-space.png", "industrySlugs": [ "defense", "satellite-mega-constellations", "orbital-economy" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-07", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/k2-space", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/k2-space" }, { "slug": "kairos", "name": "Kairos Power", "summary": "Kairos Power is commercializing its fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR), which combines TRISO pebble fuel with FLiBe coolant in a compact, low-pressure design aimed at grid and AI-data-center loads. The company runs an iterative, vertically integrated development model centered on Hermes 1, a 35 MWth demonstration reactor under safety-related construction in Oak Ridge, and Hermes 2, an electricity-producing demonstration plant for the TVA grid under a Google fleet agreement totaling up to 500 MWe by 2035. A May 2026 NRC amendment extended Hermes 1's construction-completion deadline to April 2029 (Kairos still expects to finish building the test reactor in 2028); Hermes 2 broke ground April 17, 2026 and is targeted for first grid power around 2030. In August 2026 Kairos launched NuCAMP, a 12-month manufacturing and workforce partnership at Oak Ridge, and named former SpaceX launch-operations director Dr. Mike McGuire as VP of Operations and Site Delivery. On September 2, 2026 it appointed Ignacio Redondo, formerly SVP of Finance at Nextracker, as its first CFO. On September 4 it completed the first phase of its ETU 3 hardware demonstration - a reduced-scale Hermes 2 reactor-cavity mockup used to test modular precast shielding and remote handling.", "summarySource": "https://www.kairospower.com/updates/kairos-power-appoints-ignacio-redondo-as-chief-financial-officer", "status": "Active", "founded": 2016, "headquarters": "Alameda, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Mike Laufer", "website": "https://kairospower.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/kairos.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fission", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fission", "name": "Nuclear Fission", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fission" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 3, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/kairos", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/kairos" }, { "slug": "expace", "name": "Kuaizhou Aerospace", "summary": "Kuaizhou Aerospace (快舟航天空间科技), founded in 2016 in Wuhan as CASIC's commercial launch arm under the name ExPace (航天科工火箭技术), markets the solid-propellant Kuaizhou ('fast vessel') family - derived from missile technology - for rapid, low-cost small-satellite launches that can be readied in hours. In April 2026 control shifted: Wuhan Investment Holding Group's Wuchuangxing Aerospace fund bought a 29.5904% stake from CASIC subsidiary China Aerospace Sanjiang for about 3.3 billion yuan (~$461M, implying an ~11.15B-yuan/~$1.56B valuation), becoming the company's largest shareholder as Sanjiang's stake fell from 56.43% to 26.84%. On July 31, 2026 the company completed a business-registration name change from ExPace to Kuaizhou Aerospace Space Technology Co., dropping CASIC branding entirely. Losing central-state-owned-enterprise status forces a 6-12 month business-license re-qualification that has pushed the STAR Market (科创板) IPO filing into late 2026 or early 2027. The workhorse Kuaizhou-1A (and its upgraded 1A Pro) has flown 31 times, most recently launching a pair of maritime VDES navigation satellites on December 5, 2025 - a nine-month gap with no new 1A mission as of September 8, 2026. The larger Kuaizhou-11 most recently succeeded on its sixth flight on June 17, 2026 with the CentiSpace-1 Group 05 satellites. On August 27-29, 2026 the company said Kuaizhou-11 Y3 had passed factory review in Wuhan and would move to Jiuquan for a dual-satellite Tianyi-51 / Tianyi-52 mission, the first launch under the Kuaizhou Aerospace brand; no liftoff date has been posted. Across all variants the family has logged 39 orbital attempts. All-solid expendable vehicles face intensifying pressure from reusable kerolox rivals, and the Mingfeng liquid-engine line plus the larger Kuaizhou-21/-31 concepts remain earlier-stage with no maiden-flight dates announced.", "summarySource": "https://starpath.global/news/kuaizhou-11-y3-passes-factory-review-ahead-of-dual-satellite-launch/", "status": "Majority Wuhan State-Owned (formerly CASIC-controlled; IPO-track)", "founded": 2016, "headquarters": "Wuhan, Hubei, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Zhang Di (Chairman)", "website": "https://www.expace.com.cn", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/expace.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": { "name": "China Aerospace Sanjiang Group (CASIC)", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "affiliate", "source": "http://jxt.hubei.gov.cn/bmdt/rdjj/202604/t20260413_5912696.shtml" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/expace", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/expace" }, { "slug": "landspace", "name": "LandSpace", "summary": "LandSpace (Beijing LandSpace Technology) is China's leading commercial rocket company and, through satellite affiliate Hongqing Technology, a would-be constellation operator. In July 2023 its methane-liquid oxygen Zhuque-2 became the first methalox rocket in the world to reach orbit, and the company now flies the upgraded Zhuque-2E for commercial constellation missions (its eighth Zhuque-2-family success came on June 9, 2026, with no further Zhuque-2E flight reported since). Its flagship is the reusable, stainless-steel Zhuque-3, a Falcon 9-class vehicle whose December 2025 maiden flight reached orbit but failed to recover its booster; on its second orbital flight on August 18, 2026, Zhuque-3 delivered the demo Honghu-03 satellite to orbit and completed China's first-ever landing of a private orbital-class rocket booster, joining SpaceX and Blue Origin as the third company to land an orbital booster on legs, though residual propellant ignited shortly after touchdown and the resulting fire damaged the landing-gear area and collapsed the stainless-steel stage. LandSpace says it still aims to refurbish and reuse a recovered first stage within about six months, pointing to around February 2027. Payload reported on September 4, 2026 that LandSpace is the farthest along of China's commercial rocket firms in the STAR Market queue after that landing. The company refiled an updated STAR Market prospectus on June 29, 2026, returning the Shanghai review to 'inquiry' status, and for the first time projected reaching profitability by 2029 (premised on Zhuque-3 mass production and routine reuse). That refiling disclosed LandSpace's first full-year 2025 results - revenue of 52.10 million yuan (~$7.2M, up about 11x year over year) against a widening net loss of 1.71 billion yuan (~$240M, up about 95% YoY) - and the company still seeks to raise about 7.5 billion yuan (~$1.1B). Its STAR Market share-issuance terms imply a post-listing valuation near 75 billion yuan (~$10.4B). Satellite affiliate Hongqing Technology, LandSpace's largest-shareholder constellation play, closed a Pre-B round of more than 1.3 billion yuan (~$191M) on July 2, 2026 and has filed the 10,000-satellite Honghu-3 constellation with the ITU.", "summarySource": "https://payloadspace.com/chinas-commercial-space-sector-is-going-public/", "status": "Private (Shanghai STAR Market IPO filed)", "founded": 2015, "headquarters": "Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Zhang Changwu", "website": "https://www.landspace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/landspace.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "satellite-mega-constellations" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 2, "missed": 0, "total": 3 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/landspace", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/landspace" }, { "slug": "lg-energy-solution", "name": "LG Energy Solution", "summary": "LG Energy Solution is the largest battery manufacturer outside China and the West's main hedge against Chinese dominance of the cell supply chain. Spun out of LG Chem on December 1, 2020 from a battery division that dates to 1992, it listed on the Korea Exchange in January 2022 in a KRW12.75 trillion (about $10.7B) offering, still South Korea's largest IPO ever. It ranks third globally in EV batteries with 8.3% share and 60.3 GWh installed from January through July 2026, supplying GM, Tesla, Ford, Hyundai, Stellantis, Honda and Toyota through wholly owned plants in Korea, Poland and Michigan and joint ventures including Ultium Cells with GM, NextStar Energy with Stellantis and L-H Battery with Honda. The interesting part of 2026 is the pivot. With Western EV demand flat and the US federal tax credit gone, LGES has swung its North American capacity toward grid storage: its $1.4B, 1.7-million-square-foot Holland, Michigan plant is the first large-scale LFP cell factory in the United States, is scaling from 17 GWh to more than 30 GWh by the end of 2026, and its output is sold out three to five years ahead. The all-new Lansing, Michigan plant started production on August 18, 2026, and GM and LG have already converted an Ultium plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee from EV cells to LFP storage cells. The numbers show the transition mid-flight: 2025 revenue fell to KRW23.7T as EV sales slowed, but Q2 2026 revenue jumped 24.8% year over year to KRW7.56T on ESS and cylindrical demand and the company returned to an operating profit of KRW113.3B after three consecutive quarterly losses. Guidance for 2026 is revenue growth of 20% or more with ESS sales more than tripling. Q3 2026 results are not yet out; the next scheduled earnings date is around November 5, 2026.", "summarySource": "https://cnevpost.com/2026/09/07/global-ev-battery-market-share-jan-jul-2026/", "status": "Public (KRX: 373220)", "founded": 2020, "headquarters": "Seoul, South Korea", "country": "KR", "ceo": "Kim Dong-myung", "website": "https://www.lgensol.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/lg-energy-solution.png", "industrySlugs": [ "energy-storage" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" } ], "parent": { "name": "LG Chem", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "majority-owned", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Energy_Solution" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": { "hit": 3, "slipped": 0, "missed": 1, "total": 4 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/lg-energy-solution", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/lg-energy-solution" }, { "slug": "li-auto", "name": "Li Auto", "summary": "Li Auto is a Beijing-based premium new-energy vehicle maker founded in 2015 by Li Xiang, best known for pioneering extended-range EVs (EREVs) - a battery pack paired with a gasoline range-extender generator - which powered its rapid rise. It was the first Chinese EV startup to post a full-year profit (2023) and remains among the most financially solid, ending 2025 with ~RMB101.2B (~$14B) cash. Its L-series EREV SUVs (L6/L7/L8/L9) are the volume backbone, and the company has surpassed 1,801,834 cumulative deliveries as of August 31, 2026. But 2025 was a down year - 406,343 deliveries, off ~18.8% YoY - as EREV competition intensified and the BEV transition dragged; its first BEV, the MEGA MPV (launched March 2024), flopped relative to targets. Li Auto has since expanded its BEV line with the i8 six-seat SUV (July 2025) and the i6 five-seat SUV (September 2025), the latter becoming its sales backbone. Q1 2026 turned to a RMB2.3B net loss with gross margin collapsing to 7.9% amid the i6 ramp and price competition, and management cut its full-year 2026 delivery growth target from ~40% (~550,000 units) to ~20% (~490,000 units); deliveries then fell year-over-year for three straight months before August's 37,679 units, up 32% YoY, snapped the decline, bringing January-August 2026 deliveries to 261,619 (-0.6% YoY). The company has since relaunched an all-new L9 (May 2026, with its MindVLA autonomous-driving model and in-house M100 chip), an all-new L8 (June 2026) and a revamped L6 (July 2026) to revive EREV volume, begun its first overseas manufacturing in Kazakhstan (July 2026, via partner Allur), put a second-generation MEGA on sale September 2, 2026, opened official L9 sales in the UAE on September 3 through Al Fahim, and approved a 2.65 billion yuan stake for 8.79% of Sunwoda EVB. On September 7, 2026 it said in-house 5C batteries already used on the L8, L6 and i8 will expand lineup-wide, with the new MEGA and upcoming i9 switching from CATL packs and a 2026 i6 due in the fourth quarter with Li Auto's own battery and Mach chip. The flagship pure-electric i9 SUV is set to launch on September 16, 2026 as the first vehicle on Li Auto's second-generation pure-EV platform. On September 10 Li Auto started its European marketing push as a 2026 Solheim Cup partner, naming the overseas i6 the Li 6 ahead of a Paris Motor Show debut and planned Q4 2026 European sales.", "summarySource": "https://cnevpost.com/2026/09/10/li-auto-kicks-off-european-push-names-overseas-i6-li-6/", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: LI / HKEX: 2015)", "founded": 2015, "headquarters": "Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Li Xiang", "website": "https://www.lixiang.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/li-auto.png", "industrySlugs": [ "electric-vehicles", "autonomous-vehicles", "humanoid-robots" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "humanoid-robots", "name": "Humanoid Robots", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/humanoid-robots" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 8, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/li-auto", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/li-auto" }, { "slug": "lucid-motors", "name": "Lucid Motors", "summary": "Lucid Group is a Silicon Valley EV and technology company building the Lucid Air sedan and Lucid Gravity SUV around proprietary, software-defined vehicle architectures focused on range, efficiency, and performance. Silvio Napoli (formerly chairman and CEO of Schindler) became permanent CEO on June 1, 2026; on June 22 he cut about 18% of staff and eliminated the COO role, with interim-CEO-turned-COO Marc Winterhoff departing effective immediately, and on July 2 he extended the reshuffle with a near-total C-suite overhaul - naming Alexander De Bock incoming CFO (succeeding Taoufiq Boussaid) and Raja Ramana Macha (ex-Eaton EVP and CTO) as chief technology officer, while halving the number of executives reporting directly to him. Q2 2026 deliveries were 3,953 (4,774 produced), and Lucid drew $800M on July 6 then a further $400M on August 24 on its PIF-backed delayed-draw term loan, taking DDTL principal outstanding to $1.7B with about $800M of remaining capacity. On July 14 Lucid's shares briefly crashed as much as 57% to a record intraday low of $2.37 (closing down 16% at $4.62) before the company publicly rejected as 'completely false' a report that restructuring adviser AlixPartners had floated a Chapter 11 or take-private path - reaffirming that AlixPartners is only helping improve operations, that no special board committee exists, and that ~$4.7B of pro forma liquidity is sufficient to fund operations into late 2027; the stock then rebounded sharply, spiking ~29% on July 15 and notching its best week in a year as Napoli reiterated the denial. On July 28, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal disclosed a passive 5% stake (19,513,000 Class A shares, worth roughly $150M) via SEC Schedule 13G, sending shares up about 20% and adding a new prominent Saudi investor alongside majority shareholder PIF. On August 4, 2026 Lucid reported Q2 2026 revenue of $405M and 4,774 vehicles produced (+24% YoY) alongside a $1.26B net loss (diluted EPS -$3.30) and a deeply negative -105% gross margin that included a $300M inventory impairment, and Napoli unveiled an 'operational reset' targeting $1.4B of 2026 cash savings - roughly $600-800M from inventory, $500M from capital expenditures, and $200M from operating expenses (including the $158M in annualized savings from June's workforce cut) - built around four 'must-win' priorities: cost discipline, the Lucid-Nuro-Uber robotaxi program (Gravity-based PV units now testing in the SF Bay Area and Houston, with regular robotaxi production targeted for Q4 2026 and paying-passenger service still late 2026), the AMP-2 Saudi Arabia factory, and the delayed midsize vehicle - with Cosmos production now pushed back about a year to the second half of 2027 at AMP-2 (Casa Grande to follow), Q3-Q4 production guided below Q2 levels as Casa Grande runs a single shift through year-end, and quarter-end liquidity of $3.0B (plus the subsequent $800M July and $400M August DDTL draws) guiding a runway well into 2027. On August 13, 2026 Lucid unveiled the Gravity GT-S, a 1,070-hp performance flagship trim of the Gravity SUV starting at $125,900 with Q4 2026 deliveries. Lucid's Q2 2026 Form 10-Q disclosed that stockholders' equity had swung to a deficit of $1.06B (from positive $717.3M at year-end 2025) and that the accumulated deficit had passed $17.7B; combined with continued caution about the operational reset's execution, LCID shares slid from an August 4 close of $7.78 to a $4.55 close on September 1 and were $4.63 at the September 8 close (market cap about $1.82B), a 40%+ decline from the reset-day close. Lucid is centered on stabilizing Gravity after a seatbelt recall and supplier-driven production hit, launching its Lucid-Nuro-Uber robotaxi service (San Francisco Bay Area in late 2026, Houston in 2027), scaling the expanded ≥35,000-vehicle Uber partnership, and bringing its lower-cost Atlas-based Cosmos and Earth midsize platform to market as it pushes toward profitability and positive free cash flow.", "summarySource": "https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/lcid/", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: LCID)", "founded": 2007, "headquarters": "Newark, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Silvio Napoli", "website": "https://lucidmotors.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/lucid-motors.png", "industrySlugs": [ "electric-vehicles", "autonomous-vehicles", "energy-storage" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/lucid-motors", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/lucid-motors" }, { "slug": "mistral-ai", "name": "Mistral AI", "summary": "Mistral AI is Europe's leading frontier AI lab, founded in April 2023 in Paris by CEO Arthur Mensch (ex-Google DeepMind) with chief scientist Guillaume Lample and CTO Timothée Lacroix (both ex-Meta). It champions open-weight models: its December 2025 Mistral 3 generation includes Mistral Large 3, a 675B-parameter sparse mixture-of-experts model released under Apache 2.0, alongside commercial and specialist models (Medium 3.5, Small 4, Magistral reasoning, Codestral/Devstral coding, Voxtral audio, OCR 4 documents and the new Robostral robotics line). Its consumer assistant Le Chat was rebranded 'Vibe' in May 2026 and repositioned as an agentic work-and-code platform. Positioned as Europe's sovereign alternative to US labs, Mistral has deep industrial and government ties - lead Series C investor ASML (~11% stake), Airbus, BMW, Stellantis, CMA CGM (a €100M deal) and a framework agreement with France's Ministry of Armed Forces - and is building its own Nvidia-powered infrastructure through Mistral Compute, whose first 44 MW data center south of Paris came online in mid-2026, alongside a €1.2B second site under construction with EcoDataCenter in Borlänge, Sweden - Mistral's first infrastructure investment outside France, targeted to open in 2027. Annual recurring revenue passed $400M in early 2026, up roughly 20x year over year, and CFO Johan Bergqvist said on September 8, 2026 the company is on track for $1 billion of ARR by year-end. On September 8, 2026 Mistral closed a €3 billion Series D led by Samsung Electronics, with the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund (managed by EQT) and existing investor PSG Equity as co-leads, at a post-money valuation of more than €21 billion (~$24 billion). Enterprise reach extends beyond its core industrial deals to UK grocer Tesco (three-year deal and joint AI lab, December 2025) and a Southeast Asia push anchored in Singapore, where headcount is set to triple to 100 by end-2026.", "summarySource": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/08/mistral-ai-funding-valuation-samsung.html", "status": "Private", "founded": 2023, "headquarters": "Paris, France", "country": "FR", "ceo": "Arthur Mensch", "website": "https://mistral.ai", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/mistral-ai.png", "industrySlugs": [ "artificial-intelligence", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 9, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/mistral-ai", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/mistral-ai" }, { "slug": "moderna", "name": "Moderna", "summary": "Moderna is the pioneer and, with BioNTech, one of the two global leaders in messenger-RNA (mRNA) medicine. Founded in 2010 and incubated by Flagship Pioneering, it rose to prominence with Spikevax, its COVID-19 vaccine that reached full FDA approval in 2022 and drove roughly $18B of revenue at its 2022 peak. Moderna is now navigating a steep post-COVID transition: FY2025 revenue fell ~40% to $1.9B and it posted a $2.8B net loss, prompting ~$2.2B of annual cost cuts and a 10% workforce reduction to about 4,700 employees. The company is rebuilding around a five-product respiratory franchise - Spikevax, next-gen COVID vaccine mNEXSPIKE, RSV vaccine mRESVIA, Europe's first flu+COVID combination mCOMBRIAX, and mFlusiva, the first mRNA-based flu vaccine (FDA-approved August 5, 2026) - while its highest-value bet is intismeran autogene (mRNA-4157/V940), an individualized neoantigen cancer therapy partnered with Merck that met both endpoints of its pivotal Phase 3 melanoma trial on August 19, 2026. As of early September 2026 the companies have still not filed; they say they will present full data at a medical meeting and engage with regulators. The UK MHRA authorized the 2026-2027 XFG Spikevax formula on September 7, 2026, with doses to be made at Harwell for the NHS programme. Its first rare-disease candidate, propionic acidemia therapy mRNA-3927 (partnered with Recordati), remains in a fully enrolled registrational study with data still expected in 2026. With ~$6.9B in cash as of June 30, a $2.6B convertible-note raise in late August, and a targeted return to cash-flow breakeven in 2028, Moderna is a validated-platform leader working through significant near-term financial and execution headwinds.", "summarySource": "https://pmlive.com/pharma_news/modernas-updated-covid-19-mrna-vaccine-approved-by-mhra/", "status": "Public", "founded": 2010, "headquarters": "Cambridge, Massachusetts", "country": "US", "ceo": "Stéphane Bancel", "website": "https://www.modernatx.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/moderna.png", "industrySlugs": [ "biotech", "vaccines", "oncology" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "biotech", "name": "Biotech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/biotech" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 3 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/moderna", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/moderna" }, { "slug": "moonshot-ai", "name": "Moonshot AI", "summary": "Moonshot AI is a Beijing-based frontier AI lab, founded in March 2023 by Tsinghua alumnus Yang Zhilin (formerly of Meta AI and Google Brain), best known for its Kimi assistant and the open-weight Kimi K-series models. It built its early reputation on long context - Kimi launched in October 2023 with a then-unmatched 200,000-Chinese-character window, expanded to 2 million in 2024 - before pivoting to open-weight frontier models with Kimi K2 in July 2025. Its November 2025 K2 Thinking model topped agentic benchmarks against closed US rivals, and on July 16, 2026 it released Kimi K3, a ~2.8-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model with 1M-token context that is the largest open-weight model ever and claims parity with the best closed frontier models at a fraction of their API price. Backed by Alibaba, Tencent, HongShan and Meituan, Moonshot closed a $3.5B round at a $35B valuation in July 2026 and, as of September 3, 2026, is in an ongoing follow-on round that sources told Reuters values the company at $50B. It confidentially filed for a Hong Kong IPO the same week, targeting about $3B, with a listing as early as Q1 2027. ARR reached $300M by June 2026; on OpenRouter, Kimi K3 ranked #12 by daily tokens as of September 4, 2026.", "summarySource": "https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinese-ai-firm-moonshot-files-confidentially-hong-kong-ipo-sources-say-2026-09-03/", "status": "Private (preparing a Hong Kong IPO)", "founded": 2023, "headquarters": "Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Yang Zhilin", "website": "https://www.kimi.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/moonshot-ai.png", "industrySlugs": [ "artificial-intelligence" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/moonshot-ai", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/moonshot-ai" }, { "slug": "nio", "name": "NIO", "summary": "NIO is a Chinese smart electric vehicle manufacturer built around premium EVs, battery swapping, and a multi-brand portfolio spanning NIO, ONVO, and firefly. NIO delivered 35,836 vehicles in August 2026 (+14.5% YoY), split across 21,174 NIO-brand, 8,810 ONVO-brand and 5,852 firefly-brand units, lifting year-to-date deliveries to 262,893 (+57.9% YoY) and cumulative deliveries to 1,260,485. The core NIO brand's pricing power is anchored by the third-generation ES8, which delivered 10,999 units in August (51.95% of NIO-brand volume, YTD 99,946) after topping 140,000 cumulative deliveries on August 21, even as the newer ES9 flagship cooled to 6,315 July deliveries (-26.5% month over month) after crossing 20,000 cumulative on August 8. Q2 2026 posted record revenue of RMB32.14B on 107,658 deliveries but missed guidance as memory-chip costs bit; NIO guided Q3 deliveries of 108,000-111,000. The battery swap network stood at 4,123 stations worldwide as of the Q2 report, with first true Gen-5 stations live from August 7 and 120 million swaps logged. The lineup includes the ES9 flagship executive SUV (900V, 5C charging); ONVO's three-SUV lineup (L60, L80, L90, all with NX9031); and firefly, which handed over its 80,000th vehicle in Hefei on September 5, 2026 - 17 months after the April 2025 launch - and is now live in 10+ overseas markets. On September 2, 2026 NIO opened its first Nio House in Macau and began ES9 deliveries there under a distributor-led model. Shenji's NX9031 has shipped 300,000+ units, and a September 2 report said Geely is evaluating Shenji's 700+ TOPS M97 chip for a dual-chip L3 system (no signed deal).", "summarySource": "https://www.nio.com/news/20260901001", "status": "Public (NYSE: NIO / HKEX: 9866)", "founded": 2014, "headquarters": "Shanghai, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "William Li", "website": "https://www.nio.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/nio.png", "industrySlugs": [ "electric-vehicles", "autonomous-vehicles", "energy-storage", "semiconductors" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" }, { "slug": "semiconductors", "name": "Semiconductors", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/semiconductors" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/nio", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/nio" }, { "slug": "nuscale", "name": "NuScale Power", "summary": "NuScale Power is a public small modular reactor developer, headquartered in Corvallis, Oregon, commercializing its NRC-approved 77 MWe NuScale Power Module through ENTRA1-led deployments. In 2025-26 it advanced a nonbinding program with TVA for up to 6 GW of NuScale capacity (CEO John Hopkins still targeting a binding PPA by year-end 2026, with no definitive agreement as of mid-September), secured a Final Investment Decision for the Romanian RoPower project, and launched a strategic petrochemical process-heat partnership with Ebara Elliott Energy. The Romania path now has a sharper political overhang: a July 2026 government control-body audit alleged schedule slippage and cost overruns at Doicesti, Nuclearelectrica CEO Cosmin Ghita resigned on August 26, 2026 amid those findings, and the Extraordinary General Meeting that failed for lack of quorum on September 10 reconvened on September 11 and voted unanimously to publish the control-body report. Ghita's resignation takes effect October 3, with Mihai Laurentiu Gioara named interim CEO. Energy Secretary of State Cristian Busoi said the ministry will still evaluate RoPower FID conditions at the end of September before mandating how its shareholder representatives vote. Shares closed at $8.61 on September 11 after UBS cut the stock to Sell with a $6 target. NuScale remains pre-deployment and ended Q2 2026 with about $1.9B in cash, cash equivalents and investments, on Q2 revenue of $75,000 and a net loss of $50.1M. 2026 work is centered on first-module manufacturing readiness - components for 12 modules are in production - and on September 1, 2026 NuScale and MillenniTEK said they had fabricated first-of-a-kind boron-oxide pellets for the module's passive emergency core cooling system.", "summarySource": "https://nexta.ro/2026/09/11/s-a-publicat-raportul-corpului-de-control-al-premierului-privind-actiunile-nuclearelectrica-pentru-dezvoltarea-reactoarelor-modulare-mici-dupa-acordul-actionarilor-recomandarile-oficiale/", "status": "Public (NYSE: SMR)", "founded": 2007, "headquarters": "Corvallis, Oregon", "country": "US", "ceo": "John Hopkins", "website": "https://www.nuscalepower.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/nuscale.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fission", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fission", "name": "Nuclear Fission", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fission" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/nuscale", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/nuscale" }, { "slug": "nvidia", "name": "Nvidia", "summary": "Nvidia, founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem, invented the modern GPU (GeForce 256, 1999) and then - via the 2006 CUDA platform - turned it into the engine of the AI revolution. It touched a record $5.06 trillion valuation in late July 2026 and then briefly slipped to about $4.77 trillion on July 27, 2026 as Apple reclaimed the world's-most-valuable-company title amid a broader AI-financing selloff, but Nvidia rallied back through early August - its biggest one-week market-cap gain ever - to reclaim the crown at about $5.42 trillion (Aug 7, 2026 close), before easing back to roughly $5.29 trillion (Aug 28, 2026 close, $217.89/share) after Q2 FY2027 gross-margin guidance drew a mixed reaction. Fiscal 2026 revenue hit $215.9B (+65%), and the momentum accelerated: Q2 FY2027 (ended July 2026, reported August 26, 2026) delivered a record $96.2B (+106% YoY, beating the $92.2B consensus) with data-center revenue of $89.0B (+117% YoY), CFO Colette Kress guiding Q3 to ~$108B and roughly 70% revenue growth for FY2028, and supply commitments more than doubling to $279B (mostly HBM memory) against a hyperscaler cloud backlog exceeding $2 trillion. The Blackwell Ultra GB300 platform drove the ramp, and Vera Rubin - the seven-chip platform Huang declared in full production at GTC 2026 - reached customers on July 21, 2026, shipping to OpenAI, CoreWeave, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Meta, and Dell, with OpenAI set to deploy it at scale in Q3 2026 and roughly $1 trillion in cumulative Blackwell-plus-Rubin orders projected through 2027. Nvidia has also become the AI buildout's central dealmaker: up to $100B invested in OpenAI (whose Ohio campus financing was finalized at $105B for an initial 4.25 IT-GW, online in phases from 2028), up to $10B in Anthropic, a key role in the $500B Stargate project, millions of GPUs committed to Meta, an August 10-11, 2026 financing coalition with Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR aiming to mobilize over $500B in third-party AI-compute capital, and - confirmed September 3, 2026 - a $12.93B deal to acquire AI model-hosting platform Hugging Face, Nvidia's largest acquisition ever, alongside talks to invest in Perplexity at a valuation above $30B, plus a confirmed August 31, 2026 $3.5 billion convertible-bond investment in MediaTek that opens NVLink Fusion to MediaTek custom XPUs in Nvidia rack-scale AI factories. That expanding web of AI financing, alongside a recurring circular-financing debate, remains the biggest swing factor in Nvidia's valuation. The China business is the big casualty - export restrictions triggered a $4.5B charge in 2025, and while H200 shipments to China stayed 'trivial' through mid-July 2026 under the deal with a 25% cut to the US government, ByteDance and Tencent each received roughly 10,000 H200 units in the weeks before August 19, 2026, still only about 13% of the 75,000-unit licenses each holds; Nvidia's 10-K still calls the company effectively foreclosed from China's data-center market and its guidance assumes zero China data-center revenue. Competition now comes less from AMD (still ~5-7% of AI accelerator revenue) than from customers' own silicon: Google TPUs, AWS Trainium, Broadcom-built custom ASICs, and OpenAI's own Jalapeno inference chip unveiled August 25, 2026.", "summarySource": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/26/nvidia-nvda-earnings-report-q2-2027-live-updates.html", "status": "Public", "founded": 1993, "headquarters": "Santa Clara, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Jensen Huang", "website": "https://www.nvidia.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/nvidia.png", "industrySlugs": [ "semiconductors", "ai-compute", "autonomous-vehicles", "humanoid-robots" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "semiconductors", "name": "Semiconductors", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/semiconductors" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "humanoid-robots", "name": "Humanoid Robots", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/humanoid-robots" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 9, "trackRecord": { "hit": 3, "slipped": 0, "missed": 1, "total": 4 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/nvidia", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/nvidia" }, { "slug": "oklo", "name": "Oklo", "summary": "Oklo is developing fast-fission power plants under its Aurora product line while building a vertically integrated nuclear business around power sales, fuel recycling, and radioisotopes. Aurora units are designed to produce 15-75 MWe and run on fresh, recycled, or down-blended fuel, targeting customers such as data centers, industrial sites, military facilities, utilities, and remote communities. Its first plant, Aurora-INL at Idaho National Laboratory, is advancing under DOE's Reactor Pilot Program - the DOE approved its Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis on June 11, 2026, leaving the final Documented Safety Analysis as the last safety-basis step before authorization. Oklo is deepening vertical integration through the June 2026 acquisitions of Oak Ridge precision manufacturer ARMEC and sodium-systems engineering firm Creative Engineers, plus its May 2026 selection for DOE's Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program, while Atomic Alchemy builds U.S. isotope supply around the Groves test reactor in Lockhart, Texas, which reached first criticality on August 5, 2026.", "summarySource": "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/us-says-oklo-s-small-nuclear-reactor-reaches-criticality", "status": "Public (NYSE: OKLO)", "founded": 2013, "headquarters": "Santa Clara, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Jacob DeWitte", "website": "https://oklo.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/oklo.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fission", "radioisotopes", "biotech", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fission", "name": "Nuclear Fission", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fission" }, { "slug": "biotech", "name": "Biotech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/biotech" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/oklo", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/oklo" }, { "slug": "openai", "name": "OpenAI", "summary": "OpenAI is the world's most widely used artificial-intelligence company, best known for ChatGPT - which surpassed 900 million weekly active users in early 2026 and topped 1 billion by the end of July 2026 - and for its frontier model families. GPT-5.5 (April 2026) and the GPT-5.6 family (Sol, Terra and Luna, public July 9, 2026) remain broadly available, and on September 3, 2026 OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra, first to Daybreak cybersecurity customers, calling it a generational leap and the first model designated Critical for cybersecurity. On September 9, 2026 Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane said the United States needs mandatory, capability-based national AI safety rules covering testing, independent assessment, cybersecurity and incident reporting, and OpenAI backed four California bills as Governor Newsom signed SB 813 and AB 1405. Beyond consumer chat, OpenAI runs a fast-growing enterprise and developer platform (2M+ business customers) that crossed a ~$40B annualized revenue run-rate in August 2026, with enterprise revenue overtaking the consumer business roughly two quarters ahead of OpenAI's own schedule; it is also building consumer hardware through its ~$6.5B acquisition of Jony Ive's startup io and a cyber-defense business (Daybreak). Following an October 2025 restructuring, the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC is controlled by the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation, with Microsoft holding roughly 27%. In March 2026 OpenAI closed the largest private fundraise in history - $122B at an $852B valuation, reconfirmed by an August 2026 employee tender offer. CFO Sarah Friar told employees on August 19, 2026 that OpenAI will be a public company in 2027, or sooner only if the business continues to inflect; the September 2026 listing window the market had circled passed with no public S-1.", "summarySource": "https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/openai-pushes-mandatory-national-ai-safety-requirements-2026-09-09/", "status": "Private (public benefit corporation controlled by the OpenAI Foundation)", "founded": 2015, "headquarters": "San Francisco, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Sam Altman", "website": "https://openai.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/openai.png", "industrySlugs": [ "artificial-intelligence", "ai-compute", "consumer-hardware", "defense", "cybersecurity", "healthcare" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 12, "trackRecord": { "hit": 3, "slipped": 2, "missed": 0, "total": 5 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/openai", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/openai" }, { "slug": "orienspace", "name": "Orienspace", "summary": "Orienspace (Oriental Space / Dongfang Space), founded in 2020 in Yantai, builds the Gravity (Yinli) family of launch vehicles. Its solid-propellant Gravity-1 is the world's largest solid-fuel carrier rocket - sea-launched and capable of 6,500 kg to LEO - with three successful flights (January 2024, October 2025, and a July 22, 2026 far-sea commercial mission off Shanghai that deployed nine satellites). A fourth Gravity-1, intended for a nine-satellite LEO internet constellation, had hardware at Haiyang in August 2026 and was still targeted for Q3 2026 as of September 6, with no launch yet. Gravity-2, a 70-meter reusable kerolox heavy-lift with nine Yuanli-110 engines, remains aimed at a Q4 2026 debut. The company's own product page now specifies Gravity-3 as an 81-meter, 100-tonne-to-LEO super-heavy with full-vehicle recovery. Orienspace was one of four commercial firms shortlisted in June 2026 to launch CAS's Qingzhou space-station cargo craft (first docking targeted January 2027). It closed a pre-C round of several hundred million yuan on August 5, 2026 and has begun IPO coaching toward a Shanghai STAR Market listing.", "summarySource": "https://spacenews.com/chinese-launch-startup-orienspace-targets-ipo-secures-funding-for-reusable-gravity-2-rocket/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2020, "headquarters": "Yantai, Shandong, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Bu Xiangwei", "website": "https://www.orienspace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/orienspace.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "space-stations", "satellite-mega-constellations" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "space-stations", "name": "Space Stations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/space-stations" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-06", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/orienspace", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/orienspace" }, { "slug": "pacific-fusion", "name": "Pacific Fusion", "summary": "Pacific Fusion is taking the inertial route to fusion rather than the magnetic one: instead of holding plasma in a magnetic bottle, it crushes a small capsule of deuterium-tritium fuel with an enormous, extremely fast electrical pulse. The company's distinguishing technology is the impedance-matched Marx generator, a pulser architecture that is simpler and cheaper than the systems used at national laboratories, and its plan is to gang 156 production-scale pulser modules into a Demonstration System designed to reach net facility gain - more fusion energy out than the total energy stored in the machine - by 2030. Founded in 2023 by Eric Lander, Keith LeChien, Will Regan, Carrie von Muench and Leland Ellison, it launched publicly in October 2024 with a roughly $900M Series A led by General Catalyst that is released in tranches against technical milestones; the round has since passed $1B as those milestones cleared. In June 2026 a scaled module prototype delivered more than 440 gigawatts at about 1.1 megavolts in an 80-nanosecond pulse, and in July 2026 the Sirius prototype at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory passed 3,000 full-power shots at 95% energy efficiency. Pacific Fusion broke ground on its $1B research and manufacturing campus at Mesa del Sol in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on August 25, 2026 - the National Nuclear Security Administration signed a fusion-research MOU with the company the same day - and Nature reporters visiting the nearby Los Lunas build center that month found two of the more than 150 full-scale pulser modules the Demonstration System needs already completed. The machine is designed to produce more than 100 megajoules of fusion output per pulse, about 10 times NIF's record output.", "summarySource": "https://www.abqjournal.com/business/in-albuquerque-pacific-fusion-looks-to-build-practical-basis-for-commercial-fusion-power/3108586", "status": "Private", "founded": 2023, "headquarters": "Fremont, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Eric Lander", "website": "https://www.pacificfusion.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/pacific-fusion.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fusion" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fusion", "name": "Nuclear Fusion", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fusion" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-08-31", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/pacific-fusion", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/pacific-fusion" }, { "slug": "palantir", "name": "Palantir Technologies", "summary": "Palantir Technologies builds data-integration and AI software platforms - Gotham for defense and intelligence, Foundry for enterprises and civil government, AIP for deploying large language models on private networks, and Apollo for continuous software delivery into classified and air-gapped environments. Founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp and others with early CIA backing via In-Q-Tel, the company relocated its headquarters from Denver to Miami in February 2026. It is now the leading software prime contractor in US defense: its Maven Smart System AI targeting platform became a formal Pentagon program of record in August 2026 (ahead of a September 30 deadline), carries a ~$1.3 billion contract ceiling through 2029, and is the subject of a Pentagon FY2027 budget request of $2.3 billion over five years to expand it and a related Joint Fires Network; the Army signed an enterprise agreement worth up to $10 billion over ten years in July 2025; Foundry contributes to the Army's Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) common data layer baseline alongside Anduril's Lattice (with Anduril as lead integrator), validated at division scale during the July 2026 Project Convergence-Capstone 6 exercise; and Palantir is teamed with Anduril on command-and-control software for the $185 billion Golden Dome missile shield, which passed its first publicly disclosed tests in mid-2026. Allied business is growing too, with NATO acquiring Maven in 2025 and the UK signing a strategic partnership under which Palantir will invest £1.5 billion and base its European headquarters in Britain. The commercial business, supercharged by AIP since 2023, is growing even faster than government: US commercial revenue rose 149% year-over-year in Q2 2026. Financially the company is in hypergrowth - FY2025 revenue was $4.475 billion (up 56%) with $1.625 billion in GAAP net income, Q2 2026 revenue hit a record $1.94 billion (up 93%), and 2026 guidance was raised to $8.150-8.158 billion (82% growth) with Q3 2026 guidance of $2.160-2.164 billion (report expected around November 9, 2026). It serves 1,049 customers and holds $9.2 billion in cash and treasuries with no debt. The stock remains one of the market's most richly valued, having rallied roughly 40% over the month following the Q2 beat to around a $447 billion market cap (Aug 27, 2026). Headwinds include intensifying European data-sovereignty pushback - France's internal-intelligence service moved in June 2026 to drop Palantir for French rival ChapsVision, Germany's Bundeswehr formally excluded Palantir from a planned military cloud/AI project in April 2026 in favor of three European rivals, and in July 2026 France and Germany signed a joint declaration to build a 'European sovereign digital backbone' as an alternative to Palantir's military software, pitching France's Arcadia platform to replace the Maven Smart System - alongside long-running civil-liberties criticism of its ICE and policing work. On September 3, 2026 Palantir and PwC US announced an expanded strategic alliance to scale enterprise AI, initially focused on enterprise AI deployment, M&A transformation and ERP modernization, including an AI-native deals platform the companies say can execute transactions up to 50% faster while cutting one-time transaction costs up to 45%. On September 11, 2026 Palantir and Method Security launched the Cardinal Program, offering select municipalities, utilities, and critical-infrastructure operators opt-in autonomous red-team assessments at no cost, delivered through Foundry, AIP, and Ontology for Cybersecurity. A day earlier at AIPCon 11, Palantir and Nvidia published the Sovereign AI Operating System reference stack (first customer: Nvidia's own supply chain), Cisco said Palantir's Ontology for Cybersecurity will be offered through Cisco's Secure AI Factory with Nvidia, and the FAA said it is using Palantir for Flight Plan 2026 aviation-safety management. The stock has cooled from the late-August ~$447B peak: MarketBeat put the market cap at about $399B on September 11, 2026, with shares opening at $165.86.", "summarySource": "https://www.marketbeat.com/instant-alerts/event-palantir-technologies-showcases-sovereign-ai-wins-with-nvidia-cisco-and-faa-2026-09-10/", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: PLTR)", "founded": 2003, "headquarters": "Miami, Florida", "country": "US", "ceo": "Alex Karp", "website": "https://www.palantir.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/palantir.png", "industrySlugs": [ "defense", "enterprise-software", "data-analytics", "cybersecurity" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 14, "trackRecord": { "hit": 3, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 3 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/palantir", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/palantir" }, { "slug": "pony-ai", "name": "Pony.ai", "summary": "Pony.ai is a dual-listed autonomous-driving company commercializing Level 4 robotaxi, robotruck, and personally owned vehicle technology across nine countries, underpinned by PonyWorld, a self-improving world-model training system it upgraded to version 2.0 in April 2026. Its mass-produced Gen-7 robotaxis run fully driverless commercial service across all four Chinese tier-one cities (Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, and Shanghai) plus Hangzhou and Changsha, having reached city-wide unit-economics breakeven in both Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and the company is running driverless trials or public service in Dubai, Qatar, Singapore, South Korea, and Europe (including a June 2026 Luxembourg pilot with Bolt and Stellantis and, on September 10, 2026, fully driverless passenger test rides with Verne on a 22-kilometer Zagreb airport route after Uber-booked operator-onboard rides began August 19). On August 28, 2026 Pony.ai signed a partnership with Seoul-based FutureLink to deploy 200 Gen-7 robotaxis in South Korea by 2028; Aju Press reported the first 10 BAIC Arcfox Alpha T5-based units would arrive in September 2026 for certification, with the remaining 190 after a June 2027 certification target. Q2 2026 revenue rose 68.8% YoY to $36.2M - robotaxi services revenue up 691.2% YoY to $12.1M, robotruck revenue up 40.0% YoY to $13.3M, and intelligent-solutions revenue up 4% YoY to $10.8M - with the fleet at 1,975 vehicles as of June 30 and cash and investments of $1.39B, and the company is still targeting more than 3,500 robotaxis across 20+ cities and >3.5x its 2025 robotaxi revenue by year-end, backed by an overseas deployment pipeline of more than 4,000 contracted vehicles. Dubai fare-charging service remains planned for H2 2026 and had not launched as of early September. At Auto China 2026 Pony.ai said its Gen-7 ADK bill-of-materials cost had fallen 70% and unveiled a new CATL-based L4 light-duty logistics truck, and on August 3, 2026 the company reset its heavier Gen-4 Robotruck rollout - deploying 500-1,000 units over the next two to three years rather than reaching mass-production scale by late 2026 as previously planned - while setting a longer-run goal of 100,000 light-duty autonomous trucks by 2030. On August 14, 2026 Pony.ai and Uber announced an expanded partnership to deploy more than 2,000 robotaxis across Europe.", "summarySource": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001969302/000110465926096218/tm2623123d1_ex99-1.htm", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: PONY; HKEX: 2026)", "founded": 2016, "headquarters": "Guangzhou, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "James Peng", "website": "https://pony.ai/?lang=en", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/pony-ai.png", "industrySlugs": [ "robotaxis", "autonomous-vehicles", "artificial-intelligence", "logistics", "electric-vehicles" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "robotaxis", "name": "Robotaxis", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/robotaxis" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" }, { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 8, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/pony-ai", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/pony-ai" }, { "slug": "proxima-fusion", "name": "Proxima Fusion", "summary": "Proxima Fusion is Europe's best-funded fusion company and the first research spin-off from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, founded in Munich in 2023 to commercialize the stellarator - a twisted magnetic bottle that is harder to build than a tokamak but runs continuously without needing to drive a current through the plasma. Its quasi-isodynamic design, Stellaris, was published in February 2025 as the first peer-reviewed, fully integrated stellarator power plant concept. In February 2026 Proxima signed a memorandum of understanding with RWE, the Free State of Bavaria and the Max Planck IPP to build Alpha, a roughly €2B net-energy demonstrator at Garching near Munich targeted to begin operating in 2031, followed by a commercial Stellaris plant at the decommissioned Gundremmingen nuclear site later in the 2030s; an Alpha Alliance of more than 30 European industrial companies including Siemens Energy, Framatome, Air Liquide and Thales was announced the day before. On July 7, 2026 the company raised €411M ($468M) at a €2.4B ($2.7B) valuation, led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures with RWE and Google as strategic investors, taking total funding past €650M and funding completion of its Stellarator Model Coil in 2027.", "summarySource": "https://www.proximafusion.com/press-news/proxima-fusion-raises-eu411-million-to-build-europes-commercial-fusion-champion", "status": "Private", "founded": 2023, "headquarters": "Munich, Germany", "country": "Germany", "ceo": "Francesco Sciortino", "website": "https://www.proximafusion.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/proxima-fusion.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fusion" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fusion", "name": "Nuclear Fusion", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fusion" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-08-31", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/proxima-fusion", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/proxima-fusion" }, { "slug": "qianfan-spacesail", "name": "Qianfan (Spacesail)", "summary": "Qianfan (千帆, also branded internationally as SPACESAIL) is China's first commercial LEO mega-constellation to enter formal network deployment. Operated by Shanghai Spacesail Technologies, the program launched its first batch in August 2024 and reached 256 satellites in orbit after a 15th batch launched on a Long March 6A from Taiyuan on August 6, 2026 - the first deployment since the July 4-5 batches, and no further launch had followed as of September 2, 2026 - nearly four weeks without a new deployment. That rocket's upper stage broke apart in orbit shortly after the satellites separated, scattering a debris cloud that trackers put at roughly 300 to more than 900 fragments, the second such Long March 6A upper-stage breakup after a November 2022 incident; Chinese authorities have not disclosed a cause. The company's 324-satellite initial network target for regional broadband coverage has slipped from July 2026 into the second half of the year; the longer-term roadmap still points toward a 1,296-satellite Phase 1 and an eventual constellation of more than 15,000 satellites for global coverage by 2030. Standardized flat-panel satellites are now produced for roughly 10 million yuan each - a reported cost reduction of over 96%. Trial or commercial-service agreements now cover Brazil, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Thailand and Turkiye, but the operator's own capital-increase disclosure shows just how early the revenue ramp still is: annual revenue of 49,300 yuan in 2023, 1.15 million yuan in 2024 and 188,700 yuan in 2025, against a net loss that widened to about 890 million yuan in 2025, with no revenue reported in the first quarter of 2026.", "summarySource": "https://spacenews.com/chinese-rocket-stage-breaks-up-into-cloud-of-more-than-700-pieces-of-space-debris/", "status": "Private (state/municipal-backed)", "founded": 2018, "headquarters": "Shanghai, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Dr. Jason Zheng (President)", "website": "https://spacesail.net", "logo": null, "industrySlugs": [ "satellite-mega-constellations", "telecommunications" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/qianfan-spacesail", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/qianfan-spacesail" }, { "slug": "quantumscape", "name": "QuantumScape", "summary": "QuantumScape, founded in 2010 by Jagdeep Singh, Tim Holme and Stanford professor Fritz Prinz, is the best-funded Western attempt to make a solid-state lithium-metal battery work at production scale. Its cells replace the graphite anode with lithium metal formed in place and use a ceramic separator to block the dendrites that normally kill such cells. The flagship QSE-5 B-sample delivers 844 Wh/L and 301 Wh/kg with sub-15-minute fast charging, energy density well beyond conventional lithium-ion. The company remains pre-revenue on cells and is engineering rather than inventing now: the proprietary Cobra separator process went into baseline production in June 2025, B1 samples began shipping to automakers in October 2025, and an automated Eagle pilot line was inaugurated in San Jose in February 2026 and is running above 90% core-tool uptime while ramping toward doubled cell output in the second half of 2026. Volkswagen is both its largest shareholder and its industrialisation partner: PowerCo holds rights to produce up to 85 GWh of QSE-5 cells a year, with start of production still targeted for 2029, though a July 2026 amendment cut potential milestone payments from $131M to up to $75.4M. QuantumScape added Honda as a multi-year research partner in June 2026, works with two more top-10 automakers, and has ceramic manufacturing collaborations with Murata and Corning. It has $859M of liquidity, reiterated 2026 guidance of a $250M to $275M adjusted EBITDA loss, and is pushing beyond cars through three formal verticals: QSEV (automotive), QSDC (AI data centers), and QSAS (aerospace and defense) - QSAS has already shipped QSE-5 cells to an undisclosed major American defense prime.", "summarySource": "https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/quantumscape-q2-earnings-call-highlights-230545569.html", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: QS)", "founded": 2010, "headquarters": "San Jose, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Siva Sivaram", "website": "https://www.quantumscape.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/quantumscape.png", "industrySlugs": [ "energy-storage", "electric-vehicles", "defense", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" }, { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/quantumscape", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/quantumscape" }, { "slug": "reflect-orbital", "name": "Reflect Orbital", "summary": "Reflect Orbital, founded in October 2021 by former SpaceX engineer Ben Nowack and former Zipline mechanical engineer Tristan Semmelhack, is building satellites that unfurl thin-film mirrors in low Earth orbit and steer reflected sunlight onto specific spots on the ground after dark. The pitch is 'sunlight on demand': a customer picks a location and a time window, and a passing reflector lights it up, initially at roughly the brightness of a full moon over a spot a few kilometers wide, with the long-term business aimed at extending the generating day of utility-scale solar farms by beaming sunlight to them just before dawn and just after dusk. The company has raised about $35 million, including a $6.5 million seed led by Sequoia Capital in September 2024 and a $20 million Series A led by Lux Capital in May 2025, and won a $1.25 million AFWERX SBIR Phase II contract in June 2025. Its first demonstration satellite, Earendil-1, carries a roughly 18-meter-square aluminized reflector on a 142 kg spacecraft bound for a 600 to 650 km orbit, and on July 9, 2026 the FCC licensed its construction and operation, clearing the way for a launch later in 2026 on a SpaceX rideshare. The application drew close to 1,900 mostly critical comments and hard opposition from astronomers: the European Southern Observatory calculated that a full constellation would raise background sky brightness by a factor of three to four, and the FCC granted the license while stating that optical-astronomy effects fall outside its authority. On August 6, 2026, DarkSky International, the American Bird Conservancy, Environment America and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, represented by Earthjustice, filed a formal Application for Review asking the full FCC to reverse the grant. As of September 12, 2026 the full Commission has not ruled, Earendil-1 still has no public launch-manifest assignment, and the second demonstration satellite still lacks its own FCC license. Reflect has answered with a dark-skies pledge to publish satellite positions in advance and to geofence reflections away from observatories, and its published roadmap runs from two demo satellites in 2026 to 36 in 2027, more than 1,000 by 2028, and 50,000 by 2035.", "summarySource": "https://darksky.org/news/darksky-and-allies-ask-the-fcc-to-reverse-its-approval-of-the-reflect-orbital-space-mirror/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2021, "headquarters": "Hawthorne, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Ben Nowack", "website": "https://www.reflectorbital.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/reflect-orbital.png", "industrySlugs": [ "orbital-economy", "satellite-mega-constellations", "solar-energy" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/reflect-orbital", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/reflect-orbital" }, { "slug": "relativity-space", "name": "Relativity Space", "summary": "Relativity Space, led by CEO Eric Schmidt, is building Terran R, a reusable medium-to-heavy-lift rocket aimed at commercial, government, national-security, and telecommunications missions, and is privately developing the spacecraft for NASA's Aeolus Mars orbiter. After flying Terran 1 as a 3D-printing pathfinder in 2023, the company shifted fully to Terran R, pairing large-scale additive manufacturing with conventional structures for scale and cost. As of mid-August 2026 Relativity is in integrated vehicle build and testing - the stage-one structural qualification campaign is complete (420 pressure cycles, 62 load cases, and 4.3 million lbf of axial compression), the first flight-ready second stage has completed cryoproof and COPV manifold proof testing at NASA Stennis Space Center's A-2 test stand (marking the stand's formal activation), and all Flight 1 engines - the 13 Aeon R first-stage engines plus the Aeon V second-stage engine - have completed acceptance testing, with the first Aeon R engines now being installed onto the thrust structure at Long Beach. The LC-16 Horizontal Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral is structurally complete and pad infrastructure continues to come online, against a backlog of more than $3 billion across a dozen-plus customers including OneWeb Gen-2 and SES. In June 2026 NASA selected Relativity to privately develop a Mars orbiter (NASA supplies the Aeolus instruments; Relativity supplies the spacecraft, Terran R, and cruise operations, targeting a 2028 launch). On July 7, 2026 the U.S. Space Force added Relativity Federal to the NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 national-security launch pool, and on September 9, 2026 NASA added Terran R to the Launch Services (NLS) II contract, making the still-unflown rocket eligible to bid on future NASA and NOAA missions through June 2030. On July 21, 2026 Relativity and Space Florida unveiled a statewide expansion anchored by a planned $350 million advanced-manufacturing and R&D campus in Titusville. The company's Terran R site still targets a late 2026 first launch from LC-16; reporting on September 10, 2026 said industry observers now expect the debut in 2027, and Relativity has not publicly revised its official schedule.", "summarySource": "https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-adds-relativity-spaces-terran-r-to-launch-services-contract/", "status": "Active", "founded": 2015, "headquarters": "Long Beach, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Eric Schmidt", "website": "https://www.relativityspace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/relativity-space.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "defense", "orbital-economy" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/relativity-space", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/relativity-space" }, { "slug": "rivian", "name": "Rivian", "summary": "Rivian is an American automotive technology company that sells the R1T pickup, R1S SUV and Commercial Van and launched the midsize R2 platform on June 9, 2026. Q2 2026 results, reported July 30, showed the R2 ramp starting to pay off: revenue rose 27% year-over-year to $1.658 billion and Rivian posted a record $179 million consolidated gross profit, though that profit was driven almost entirely by a $215 million, 42%-margin software and services segment (mostly the Volkswagen joint venture) while the automotive segment still lost $36 million (narrowed from a $335 million loss a year earlier). Rivian delivered 12,194 vehicles in the quarter, maintained its raised full-year 2026 delivery guidance of 65,000-70,000 units, and narrowed its 2026 adjusted-EBITDA-loss guidance to $1.8-2.0 billion while cutting planned capex to $1.7-1.8 billion; it ended the quarter with $5.31 billion in cash and short-term investments. Execution risk remains: a July 21 pause on Half Moon Grey R2 deliveries (paint-mismatched trim parts, ~800 vehicles) had not been lifted as of mid-August, and CEO RJ Scaringe has flagged memory-chip supply constraints as his top concern for the ramp. Rivian also raised R1 base prices roughly $7,000 in July, faces an NHTSA probe into 115,000 R1 vehicles over rear toe-link bolts, and on July 24 sued the U.S. government for a full refund of Section 301/IEEPA tariffs (Rivian says it has already booked a partial tariff-refund receivable). On August 27, 2026 Rivian said longtime CFO Claire McDonough - who joined in 2021 and led the company through its IPO - will depart October 30 to become CFO of GE Vernova, with VP of Finance Derek Mulvey serving as interim CFO during the R2 ramp. As of September 8, 2026 the company had not yet published Q3 production or delivery figures, and the second R2 shift at Normal was still targeted for September 30. Alongside its consumer and fleet vehicles, Rivian is investing heavily in in-house autonomy and AI as it tries to broaden from an EV manufacturer into a larger transportation technology platform, anchored by a $1.25 billion Uber partnership to deploy up to 50,000 autonomous R2-based robotaxis starting in 2028.", "summarySource": "https://rivian.com/investors", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: RIVN)", "founded": 2009, "headquarters": "Irvine, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "RJ Scaringe", "website": "https://www.rivian.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/rivian.png", "industrySlugs": [ "electric-vehicles", "autonomous-vehicles" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/rivian", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/rivian" }, { "slug": "rocketlab", "name": "Rocket Lab", "summary": "Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company spanning launch, hypersonic test launch, spacecraft, payloads, satellite components, laser optical communications, and space robotics, with total headcount reaching 3,217 by the end of Q2 2026 after the Mynaric and Motiv acquisitions. Electron remains the second most frequently launched U.S. rocket - Rocket Lab reached 95 missions with the September 11, 2026 'Happily Ever Faster' dedicated Earth-observation launch from Launch Complex 1, following the September 2 'Owl Around the World' Synspective StriX flight, putting it on track for a record year and its 100th launch - and Rocket Lab is developing the medium-lift Neutron rocket for constellation, national-security, and exploration missions; the live Q4 2026 milestone is now delivery of Neutron to the Wallops pad, though CEO Peter Beck told analysts on the August 10 earnings call that the end-of-year launch window is narrowing and a slip into 2027 is a real possibility. The company posted record Q1 2026 revenue of $200.3M and record Q2 2026 revenue of $234M (+62% YoY), guiding to $250M-$265M in Q3 2026 revenue, and completed the $155.3M Mynaric and the Motiv Space Systems acquisitions in April and May 2026 to add laser comms, a European footprint, and Mars-proven robotics in-house. On May 27, 2026 Rocket Lab cleared the System Requirements Review for the Space Development Agency's $816M Tracking Layer Tranche 3 missile-defense constellation, taking total SDA awards above $1.3B, and on June 22, 2026 the company joined the Nasdaq-100 Index. On June 29, 2026 Rocket Lab announced its largest-ever deal - an agreement to acquire satellite-communications operator Iridium Communications for about $8B in cash and stock ($54.00/share, roughly half cash and half Rocket Lab stock), adding an operational 66-satellite L-band constellation, ~2.55M subscribers, $871M of 2025 revenue, and globally harmonized spectrum; the deal has since cleared U.S. antitrust review, Rocket Lab filed a Form S-4 registration statement and a $1.94B at-the-market equity program to help fund the cash portion and reduce its $3.6B bridge loan, and Iridium stockholders are set to vote at a September 24, 2026 special meeting, with closing still expected in mid-2027. On July 27, 2026 Rocket Lab won a $266M U.S. Space Force RSLP contract for 12 (plus an option for six more) HASTE suborbital missile-defense launches through 2028, opening a fourth launch pad at Kodiak, Alaska, and on August 4, 2026 the U.S. Space Force awarded Rocket Lab a $397M contract under the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator program to build, launch on the still-unflown Neutron rocket, and operate 'Flatellite' tracking satellites. Rocket Lab also added a second GEO satellite production award (Viasat's PTS-G program, August 17), was onboarded to the Space Force's $981M-ceiling NITE-STAR space test infrastructure IDIQ (August 17), and was selected for the Space Force's Space Data Network Consortium with $12M in initial delivery orders (August 18). On August 10, 2026 Rocket Lab reported record Q2 backlog of $2.36B and unveiled GHOST, a containerized Deployable Launch System giving Electron and HASTE launch-anywhere responsive capability, with its first site standing up at Kodiak, Alaska.", "summarySource": "https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/09/08/rocket-lab-s-next-neutron-milestone-is-a-pad-delivery-not-a-launch-i-d-hold-off-on-buying-the-stock/", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: RKLB)", "founded": 2006, "headquarters": "Long Beach, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Peter Beck", "website": "https://www.rocketlabusa.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/rocketlab.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "orbital-economy", "defense", "satellite-mega-constellations", "telecommunications" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 11, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/rocketlab", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/rocketlab" }, { "slug": "safe-superintelligence", "name": "Safe Superintelligence", "summary": "Safe Superintelligence is Ilya Sutskever's research lab, founded in June 2024 with one stated product and an explicit commitment to ship nothing before it: a safe superintelligence. It has raised roughly $8 billion without releasing a model, a paper, or a benchmark result. The most recent tranche is a reported $5 billion investment from Nvidia announced July 27, 2026, paired with prioritized access to the Vera Rubin platform, which SSI says raises its compute by an order of magnitude over the next 12 months and moves its training off the Google Cloud TPUs it had used since founding. That makes SSI the third lab, after OpenAI and Anthropic, to hold a disclosed Nvidia equity stake. Its last disclosed valuation was $32 billion in April 2025, against roughly 50 employees. Co-founder Daniel Gross left for Meta in mid-2025, after which Sutskever became CEO and co-founder Daniel Levy became president; Sutskever had rejected a Meta acquisition approach the same year. Investor Gavin Baker said in early August 2026 that SSI was targeting its first model release that month; the company never confirmed the claim. As of 7 September 2026 the ssi.inc homepage is unchanged, Wikipedia lists no public model, and no SSI artifact appears in public model catalogs.", "summarySource": "https://ssi.inc/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2024, "headquarters": "Palo Alto, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Ilya Sutskever", "website": "https://ssi.inc", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/safe-superintelligence.png", "industrySlugs": [ "artificial-intelligence", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-07", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/safe-superintelligence", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/safe-superintelligence" }, { "slug": "saronic", "name": "Saronic", "summary": "Saronic designs and mass-produces autonomous surface vessels for the US Navy and allied navies, and in 2026 became the first American company whose uncrewed boats both rescued aircrew and struck a target in combat. A Corsair recovered two downed US Army aviators off Oman on June 8, 2026, the first publicly reported personnel recovery by an unmanned surface vessel, and three Corsairs hit Iran's Bandar Abbas naval base on July 12, 2026 in the first combat use of USVs by American forces. Founded in 2022 by former Navy SEAL Dino Mavrookas, it closed a $1.75B Series D on March 31, 2026 at a $9.25B valuation, holds a $392M Navy production contract for the 24-foot Corsair awarded in December 2025, and builds a family of eight vessel classes from the six-foot Spyglass to the 180-foot Marauder on a single autonomy stack, Echelon. Its industrial bet is bigger than any one hull: a $300M expansion of the Franklin, Louisiana shipyard it bought from Gulf Craft (topped out August 25, 2026, designed for up to 20 Marauders a year), and a $3.2B Port Alpha shipyard at Brownsville, Texas that is meant to open in 2028 and build vessels up to 850 feet. A strategic collaboration with Nvidia, announced October 2025, pairs Nvidia's AI computing and simulation tools with Saronic's Echelon autonomy stack to speed up software development and, longer term, ship design and production.", "summarySource": "https://www.workboat.com/saronic-tops-out-300-million-louisiana-shipyard-expansion", "status": "Private", "founded": 2022, "headquarters": "Austin, Texas", "country": "US", "ceo": "Dino Mavrookas", "website": "https://www.saronic.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/saronic.png", "industrySlugs": [ "defense", "artificial-intelligence" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-07", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/saronic", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/saronic" }, { "slug": "shield-ai", "name": "Shield AI", "summary": "Shield AI sells the pilot, not the plane. Its Hivemind autonomy software flies aircraft that have lost GPS and communications, and the company now says it has been deployed on more than 30 platforms. In June 2026 the Air Force put Hivemind on contract for Collaborative Combat Aircraft mission autonomy: six vendors hold baseline six-year contracts, but only Shield AI, Anduril and RTX Collins Aerospace were funded for the first of two six-month competitive phases that decide the program's primary autonomy provider by summer 2027. The company was founded in San Diego in 2015 by former Navy SEAL Brandon Tseng, his brother Ryan Tseng, and Andrew Reiter, and is run since March 2025 by CEO Gary Steele, formerly of Proofpoint and Splunk. Its hardware business is the MQ-35 V-BAT, a 165-pound tail-sitting VTOL drone flown by five US services and militaries from Ukraine to Japan, selected in April 2026 to compete for up to $800 million in Navy contractor-operated ISR task orders. Taiwan's Navy in August 2026 published a NT$36 billion 2026-2029 budget to buy 280 V-BATs, the largest planned order to date, though a signed contract has not been confirmed. Its bet on the future is X-BAT, an autonomous VTOL fighter with a GE F110 engine and a refurbished 1990s AVEN thrust-vectoring nozzle: GE completed more than 100 hours of ground tests and shipped the nozzle in early September 2026, and Shield AI is now targeting a tethered vertical hover from a 180-foot crane by the end of 2026, then mission capability in 2028 and production in 2029. At MSPO in September 2026 Shield AI, PGZ and WZL-2 signed a five-year letter of intent to design, produce, deliver and sustain X-BAT in Poland, also covering Hivemind, V-BAT, MRO, training and technology transfer. Shield AI raised $2 billion in March 2026 at a $12.7 billion valuation, more than doubling its prior mark, and is projecting more than $540 million of revenue in 2026 against roughly $300 million the prior fiscal year. The counterweight to all of it is reliability: a June 2026 Reuters investigation documented more than 50 V-BAT crashes in 18 months and an injury to a Romanian navy officer during training, and whistleblower complaints alleging safety concerns were dismissed.", "summarySource": "https://defence24.com/industry/poland-to-produce-x-bat-autonomous-fighter-drones", "status": "Private", "founded": 2015, "headquarters": "San Diego, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Gary Steele", "website": "https://shield.ai", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/shield-ai.png", "industrySlugs": [ "defense", "artificial-intelligence", "unmanned-aircraft" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 9, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/shield-ai", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/shield-ai" }, { "slug": "skyroot", "name": "Skyroot Aerospace", "summary": "Skyroot Aerospace builds small-satellite launch vehicles in Hyderabad and on July 18, 2026 became the first private Indian company to reach orbit, making India the third country after the United States and China with a privately developed orbital launcher. Vikram-1, a 22-meter carbon-composite rocket with three solid stages and a 3D-printed restartable liquid upper stage, lifted off from ISRO's Satish Dhawan Space Centre after a 35-minute hold and delivered its payloads to a roughly 450 km orbit about 15 minutes later. Founded in 2018 by former ISRO engineers Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka, the company had already flown India's first private rocket, the suborbital Vikram-S, in November 2022. Two months before the orbital flight it became India's first space-tech unicorn, raising about $60 million at a $1.1 billion valuation from GIC and Sherpalo Ventures with BlackRock-managed funds joining, taking total capital raised to roughly $160 million. The industrial bet behind the launch record is Infinity Campus, a 200,000 sq ft Hyderabad factory inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November 2025 and designed to turn out one orbital rocket a month - and the factory is already in use: on August 23, 2026 Skyroot shipped the first stage of its second Vikram-1, built at Infinity Campus, to Sriharikota, with remaining stages due in the following months and a second test flight still targeted for late 2026. The company is no longer pre-revenue: provisional FY26 results show Rs 100.6 crore (~$12M) of operating revenue from its space-systems business (composite structures, payload adaptors, propulsion hardware), an order book of more than Rs 605 crore, and customer advances above Rs 252 crore as of March 2026, even though commercial launch service is still slated for 2027 after a third or fourth Vikram flight. Next comes that second test, then Vikram-2, a cryogenic-upper-stage vehicle carrying 900 kg to low Earth orbit targeted for late 2027.", "summarySource": "https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/month-after-maiden-success-skyroot-begins-shipping-2nd-vikram-1-rocket-hardware-to-sriharikota/articleshow/133567615.cms", "status": "Private", "founded": 2018, "headquarters": "Hyderabad, India", "country": "IN", "ceo": "Pawan Kumar Chandana (Co-founder & CEO)", "website": "https://www.skyroot.in", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/skyroot.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-06", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/skyroot", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/skyroot" }, { "slug": "space-epoch", "name": "Space Epoch", "summary": "Space Epoch (箭元科技), legally Beijing Jianyuan Technology and branded 'Sepoch', is a Chinese commercial launch startup founded by Wei Yi (a former CALT and i-Space/Interstellar Glory engineer) to develop the Yuanxingzhe-1 ('Hiker-1') - a stainless-steel, methane-liquid oxygen, partially reusable medium-lift rocket whose sea-recovery, low-cost design draws frequent comparisons to a smaller SpaceX Starship. On May 29, 2025 it pulled off China's first sea-based vertical-takeoff/vertical-landing recovery test: a single-engine demonstrator flew a ~125-second suborbital hop to roughly 2.5 km and executed a controlled splashdown off Haiyang, Shandong, with the stainless stage recovered largely intact. Rather than build its own engines, Space Epoch buys methalox powerplants from engine maker Jiuzhou Yunjian (its LY-70 'Longyun' engine). In January 2026 it broke ground on a 5.2 billion yuan (~$740M) sea-recovery rocket plant in Hangzhou sized for up to 25 vehicles a year, aiming to cut launch costs toward 20,000 yuan/kg, and signed a payload cooperation with Hangzhou satellite maker Star Vision (Diwei-2). The plant's first vehicle, named 'Qiantang-hao,' was planned to start final assembly by the end of August 2026; as of early September 2026 no public confirmation of that assembly start has appeared. The latest disclosed hardware work is a July 22, 2026 second-stage tail-cabin vibration test, with first-flight systems still in joint testing and a debut orbital launch plus first-stage sea recovery still targeted by year-end. The company has expanded its footprint with a new Wenchang, Hainan launch-and-recovery site (acquired July 2026) and a Shandong manufacturing/R&D subsidiary in Haiyang (May 2026). It has also signed a Taobao/Alibaba partnership exploring rocket-based parcel delivery and a strategic cooperation with Shifang Xinglian (Suzhou) Aerospace Technology toward a new MEO satellite constellation.", "summarySource": "https://news.10jqka.com.cn/20260722/c678363589.shtml", "status": "Private", "founded": 2019, "headquarters": "Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Wei Yi", "website": null, "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/space-epoch.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "satellite-mega-constellations" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 3, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/space-epoch", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/space-epoch" }, { "slug": "space-pioneer", "name": "Space Pioneer", "summary": "Space Pioneer (Beijing Tianbing Technology), founded in 2019 by former LandSpace CTO Kang Yonglai, develops kerosene-liquid oxygen rockets and engines from a Fengtai, Beijing campus. Its Tianlong-2 became the first privately developed Chinese liquid-propellant rocket to reach orbit (April 2023). The flagship reusable Tianlong-3 failed on its April 3, 2026 maiden flight from Jiuquan's Dongfeng commercial zone about 33 seconds after liftoff, losing the Hangsheng-8 / TW-4 Xiyou satellite. As of early September 2026 the company has published no closed 'zeroing' investigation and no return-to-flight date; a second vehicle is still only reported as being prepared for a possible attempt before year-end. Official product specs now list Tianlong-3 at 72 m tall, 3.8 m diameter, 600 t liftoff mass, 855 t thrust, 17-22 t to LEO and 10-17 t to 500 km SSO, with nine TH-12 first-stage engines, a TH-12V second stage, a TH-32 upper stage, and at least 20 planned first-stage reuses. The site also advertises a heavier TL-3H strap-on variant (68 t to LEO) and a TL-3M crewed concept that has not flown. Space Pioneer has raised roughly $764M. A December 2025 Shanghai Stock Exchange rule now requires a successful orbital insertion on a medium-to-large reusable vehicle before a commercial-rocket STAR Market listing; Payload reported in early September 2026 that Space Pioneer filed for IPO counselling in 2025 and remains there after the April failure, while LandSpace, CAS Space, and Galactic Energy have moved further on the pad.", "summarySource": "https://payloadspace.com/chinas-commercial-space-sector-is-going-public/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2019, "headquarters": "Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Kang Yonglai", "website": "https://www.spacepioneer.cc", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/space-pioneer.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "satellite-mega-constellations" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/space-pioneer", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/space-pioneer" }, { "slug": "spacex", "name": "SpaceX", "summary": "Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) designs, manufactures, and launches reusable rockets and spacecraft. The company operates Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Dragon, Starlink, and the government-focused Starshield line while continuing to develop Starship for high-cadence heavy-lift missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Starlink crossed 12 million customers across 160+ countries on June 4, 2026 and the constellation now exceeds 10,400 working satellites in orbit. Following the February 2026 xAI merger, SpaceX also operates the Memphis Colossus supercomputers as an AI hyperscaler, disclosing $14.1B of new Cloud Services Agreements signed in Q2 2026 alone (on top of the Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI compute deals). SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history on June 12, 2026, debuting on Nasdaq under ticker SPCX at its fixed $135-per-share price for a roughly $1.77 trillion valuation and about $75B in proceeds, with Elon Musk retaining ~82% voting control; SPCX slid as low as $107.01 in late July before rebounding to close above its $135 IPO price on August 10, 2026 for the first time since mid-July. Starship returned to flight after the FAA closed the Flight 12 mishap investigation on July 13, 2026: on July 24, 2026 Flight 13 - the second flight of the Version 3 vehicle - deployed the program's first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites and made the softest ship splashdown yet, and recovery crews towed the intact upper stage (Ship 40) through rough seas to Christmas Island, Australia by August 18, 2026 - the first Starship upper stage ever recovered intact after flight - before the semi-submersible vessel Forte departed Christmas Island on August 28, 2026 to carry it roughly 20,000 km back to Starbase, Texas. Days after its IPO, SpaceX agreed on June 16, 2026 to acquire AI coding startup Cursor's parent Anysphere for $60B in an all-stock deal - the largest acquisition of a venture-backed startup ever - and closed the deal on August 15, 2026, ahead of its late-August target, giving Cursor access to SpaceX's GPU fleet including the Colossus supercomputer. SpaceX posted its first earnings as a public company on August 4, 2026 (Q2 revenue of $7.8B, up 92% year over year, narrowing its net loss to $541M), and on August 11 Elon Musk told employees SpaceX's AI compute business would exceed all its other revenue by September 2026 and account for 99% of the company's value within five years, targeting 10 gigawatts of AI compute capacity - up from 1.4 GW at the end of Q2 - by the end of 2027. On August 25 SpaceX announced a $100 billion Starbase Louisiana spaceport in Vermilion Parish, with construction expected in 2027 and a first launch targeted as soon as 2029. A Falcon Heavy flew its 13th mission on August 30, 2026, launching NASA's Roman Space Telescope with both side boosters landing intact at Cape Canaveral, a day after NASA and SpaceX postponed the planned September 12 Crew-13 ISS launch when an oxidizer leak was found in Dragon's propulsion system during prelaunch processing. A mid-August 13F filing also disclosed Nvidia holds roughly $21B of SpaceX stock via its earlier xAI investment, as SpaceX committed on its August 4 earnings call to building its future AI compute exclusively on Nvidia's Vera Rubin architecture. SPCX shares climbed about 7% to close at $150.84 on September 3, 2026 after Oppenheimer raised its price target to $280 from $250 on growing confidence in the AI-compute business, with investors also looking ahead to the approaching Starship Flight 14 test.", "summarySource": "https://247wallst.com/investing/2026/09/03/spacex-rises-7-as-starship-test-14-approaches-tesla-jumps-7-rocket-lab-ticks-up/", "status": "Active", "founded": 2002, "headquarters": "Starbase, Texas", "country": "US", "ceo": "Elon Musk", "website": "https://www.spacex.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/spacex.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "orbital-economy", "defense", "ai-compute", "semiconductors" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "semiconductors", "name": "Semiconductors", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/semiconductors" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 11, "trackRecord": { "hit": 4, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 5 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/spacex", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/spacex" }, { "slug": "starcloud", "name": "Starcloud", "summary": "Starcloud is building data centers in orbit, and it is the only company that has actually run a data-center-class GPU in space rather than rendering one. Starcloud-1, a 60 kg satellite carrying an Nvidia H100, launched November 2, 2025 on SpaceX's Bandwagon-4 rideshare and by December had run Google's Gemma model and trained a small language model in orbit, both firsts. Founded in January 2024 as Lumen Orbit by Philip Johnston, Ezra Feilden, and Adi Oltean, renamed in March 2025 and now based in Redmond, Washington, it closed a $170 million Series A on March 30, 2026 at $1.1 billion and a $250 million Series A extension on August 21, 2026 at $2.3 billion, taking total raised to about $450 million. The pitch is that solar power above the atmosphere and radiative cooling in vacuum beat grid power and water cooling on the ground once launch is cheap enough, and the company has filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to 88,000 orbital data-center satellites. Starcloud-2, once targeted for October 2026, is now two 8 kW rideshare satellites in 2027 for customers including US government agencies, while Starcloud-3 remains gated on commercial Starship around 2028 to 2029.", "summarySource": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/21/starcloud-raises-200-million-for-orbital-data-centers-as-launch-options-dry-up/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2024, "headquarters": "Redmond, Washington", "country": "US", "ceo": "Philip Johnston", "website": "https://www.starcloud.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/starcloud.png", "industrySlugs": [ "orbital-economy", "satellite-mega-constellations", "ai-compute", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-07", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/starcloud", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/starcloud" }, { "slug": "starlink", "name": "Starlink", "summary": "Starlink is SpaceX's satellite internet division and the largest satellite constellation ever flown, with more than 10,900 active satellites in low Earth orbit serving 12M+ customers across 160+ countries as of mid-2026. Reported as SpaceX's Connectivity segment, it generated $11.39B of revenue in 2025 (61% of SpaceX's total, up ~49% year over year) with $7.17B of segment adjusted EBITDA, and grew Q2 2026 quarterly revenue 66% year over year to $4.29B-$4.3B - the profit engine funding Starship and SpaceX's AI-compute buildout. Beyond fixed broadband, Starlink runs maritime, aviation (42 airlines have Starlink Wi-Fi), and Direct to Cell services: the July 2025 T-Satellite launch with T-Mobile made satellite-to-phone service commercial in the US, and the FCC-approved ~$17B EchoStar spectrum purchase (May 2026) positions 'Starlink Mobile' to become a direct consumer carrier competing with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile - though all three have so far publicly declined an MVNO deal. Next-generation V3 satellites - roughly 1 Tbps of downlink capacity each, launchable only on Starship - began deploying operationally on July 24, 2026, with Starship Flight 14 (an FCC filing puts the target at NET September 15, 2026) set to be the vehicle's first genuine orbital-trajectory attempt; V3 underpins plans for gigabit consumer service and a target of ~25M users by year-end 2026. SpaceX raised most residential and aviation Starlink plan prices in mid-2026, and on its first public earnings call as a Nasdaq-listed company (SPCX, Aug 4, 2026) confirmed Starlink's Q2 subscriber and revenue growth and reiterated plans to build its own Starlink Mobile network rather than lease capacity to a wireless carrier. Consumer service went live in the UAE on September 3, 2026 after a 10-year TDRA General Space Services License, and on September 2 SpaceX signed Europe's first Starlink Mobile and Sovereign Solutions deals with 4iG for Hungary, Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia.", "summarySource": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026052515/earningsreleaseq22608042.htm", "status": "Active", "founded": 2015, "headquarters": "Redmond, Washington", "country": "US", "ceo": "Michael Nicolls (VP of Starlink Engineering)", "website": "https://www.starlink.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/starlink.png", "industrySlugs": [ "satellite-mega-constellations", "telecommunications" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": { "name": "SpaceX", "companySlug": "spacex", "relationship": "division", "source": "https://www.satellitetoday.com/finance/2026/05/20/spacexs-ipo-filing-gives-first-look-into-companys-financials/" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/starlink", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/starlink" }, { "slug": "stoke-space", "name": "Stoke Space", "summary": "Stoke Space is a Kent, Washington rocket company developing fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicles. Its first orbital vehicle, Nova Pathfinder, pairs seven full-flow staged-combustion Zenith engines with a reusable Andromeda upper stage whose actively cooled metallic heat shield is integrated into the engine. On September 8, 2026 Stoke completed an initial $1 billion Series E close (co-led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital), bringing total capital raised to $2.3 billion at a reported valuation of roughly $10 billion, and publicly unveiled Nova Block 2, a larger 15-metric-ton-class reusable rocket (about 23 metric tons expendable) with 14 Zenith engines and a 5-meter fairing, targeted for first flight in 2029. Pathfinder's first orbital launch has slipped from late 2026 to early 2027 and will carry an AstroForge asteroid-prospecting spacecraft; Stoke plans multiple Pathfinder flights through 2027-2028. The company sits in the U.S. Space Force's NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 pool (ceiling raised to about $17B in July 2026) but cannot compete for launch-service task orders until Pathfinder flies. Moses Lake is expanding from 75 to 550 acres so Pathfinder and Block 2 test campaigns can run in parallel, and SLC-14 at Cape Canaveral is essentially complete and awaiting flight hardware.", "summarySource": "https://www.stokespace.com/news/stoke-space-series-e", "status": "Active", "founded": 2019, "headquarters": "Kent, Washington", "country": "US", "ceo": "Andy Lapsa", "website": "https://www.stokespace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/stoke-space.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 2, "missed": 0, "total": 3 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/stoke-space", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/stoke-space" }, { "slug": "sungrow", "name": "Sungrow", "summary": "Sungrow is the company that turns batteries into a working power plant, and in 2026 Wood Mackenzie ranked it first in the world among battery energy storage system integrators, ahead of Tesla and CATL. Founded in 1997 in Hefei by former university lecturer Cao Renxian on personal savings and borrowed money, it built its business on solar inverters, where it has led or tied for first in global shipments for years, then applied the same power-electronics expertise to grid storage. Storage overtook inverters as its largest business in 2025: energy storage system revenue rose 49.4% to RMB37.29B, or 41.8% of a company total of RMB89.18B, on shipments of 43 GWh (up 53.6%), with overseas volumes up 89% while Sungrow deliberately pulled back from a low-margin Chinese market. Cumulative storage shipments passed 93 GWh by the end of 2025 and the company targets more than 60 GWh in 2026 alone. Growth reversed sharply through H1 2026: revenue fell 28.99% year over year to RMB30.91B and net profit fell 32.01% to RMB5.26B, as falling storage prices, intensifying competition, and a slowdown in China's residential solar market compressed margins - though storage revenue (RMB15.46B, down 13.18% but a smaller drop than the company overall) crossed 50% of total revenue for the first time as PV inverters fell even further. H1 storage shipments still rose 28% to 25 GWh, putting the 60 GWh full-year target within reach if the second half stays strong, while inverter shipments fell to about 66 GW from 76 GW a year earlier and overseas markets accounted for 73.4% of revenue. Its flagship PowerTitan 3.0 platform, launched in June 2025 and brought to Europe as a grid-forming system in January 2026, spans 3.45 MWh 10-foot to 12.5 MWh 30-foot containers built on 684 Ah stacked cells and a fully liquid-cooled silicon-carbide power conversion system reaching 99.3% peak efficiency, with grid-forming features including 20-millisecond reactive response and gigawatt-scale black start. In July 2026 Sungrow also launched EnerNeo, a solid-state transformer for AI data center power delivery, and by early September 2026 it had begun commercial EnerNeo shipments, with about 2 GWh of firm AIDC storage orders and a pipeline above 10 GWh. After unveiling PowerMatrix (a combined PV-storage inverter architecture) at SNEC in June and PowerHarbor (a modular residential battery system) at Intersolar Europe the same month, Sungrow refiled for a Hong Kong listing in April 2026 to fund overseas manufacturing, including new storage factories in Poland and Egypt. The July 2026 US FCC ban on new Chinese-made grid inverter imports briefly wiped out more than RMB100B of Sungrow's market value; the FCC narrowed that ban on August 20, 2026, and management said it expects a gradual US pullback, turning in September 2026 to Samsung SDI cells to keep supplying the US storage market without building a US factory.", "summarySource": "https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/09/04/chinese-pv-industry-brief-inverter-manufacturers-post-mixed-h1-results-as-storage-gains-ground/", "status": "Public (SZSE: 300274; Hong Kong listing application filed)", "founded": 1997, "headquarters": "Hefei, Anhui, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Cao Renxian", "website": "https://www.sungrowpower.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/sungrow.png", "industrySlugs": [ "energy-storage", "solar-energy", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 8, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/sungrow", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/sungrow" }, { "slug": "tae-technologies", "name": "TAE Technologies", "summary": "TAE Technologies is a private fusion company developing hydrogen-boron fusion with a beam-driven field-reversed-configuration architecture. Its 2025 'Norm' breakthrough reduced reactor complexity enough to skip the planned Copernicus step and move directly toward Da Vinci, its first prototype power plant. In 2026 TAE completed its multi-state site evaluation tour for the first 50 MWe plant (Alabama, Ohio, Texas), formally established the TAE Beam UK joint venture with UKAEA at Culham, and is targeting a Q4 2026 close of its $6B all-stock merger with Trump Media & Technology Group. The Form S-4 that would unlock a further $100M of TMTG cash remained unfiled as of September 6, 2026, with TAE's going-public audits still underway; no final plant site has been announced. The company now states more than $1.5B in private capital. TAE Power Solutions and TAE Life Sciences commercialize adjacent power-delivery and oncology technologies derived from its fusion R&D.", "summarySource": "https://tae.com/faq-company/", "status": "Private (proposed TMTG merger; targeted Q4 2026 close)", "founded": 1998, "headquarters": "Foothill Ranch, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Michl Binderbauer", "website": "https://tae.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/tae-technologies.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fusion", "energy-storage", "biotech" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fusion", "name": "Nuclear Fusion", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fusion" }, { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" }, { "slug": "biotech", "name": "Biotech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/biotech" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-06", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/tae-technologies", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/tae-technologies" }, { "slug": "telesat", "name": "Telesat", "summary": "Telesat is a Canadian satellite operator running a declining legacy GEO business while building Telesat Lightspeed, an LEO network now growing from 198 to 225 satellites. Q2 2026 consolidated revenue fell 25% YoY to CAD $79.5M (H1 2026 CAD $167M, also -25%) and full-year 2026 GEO guidance remains CAD $300M-$320M. The first two Lightspeed production satellites remain on track for December 2026, with full commercial service expected at end of Q1 2028; FY2026 Lightspeed investment guidance was raised to $1.3B-$1.5B (from $1.0B-$1.2B) to fund the accelerated 156-to-225-satellite build-out. On August 4, 2026 Telesat signed a definitive 15-year, $2.3B contract (up to $2.7B with options) with Canada's Defence Investment Agency to deliver Military Ka-band Arctic connectivity to the Canadian Armed Forces under the ESCP-P program - the largest contract in the company's history - and combined with an April 2026 Northwestel rural-broadband deal for Nunavut, it lifted pro forma LEO backlog from about US$1.1B to roughly US$5.6B. On September 2, 2026 Farcast completed an over-the-air electronically steered antenna demonstration on Telesat's LEO 3 satellite, the next step toward a fully integrated Lightspeed user terminal. Telesat still faces an acute debt crisis: Q2 2026 net loss widened to CAD $559M largely on non-cash Lightspeed warrant and FX losses, roughly $2.1B of Telesat Canada debt matures over the following 14 months, Telesat drew a further $120M loan on August 13, 2026 and disclosed a going-concern warning, and lenders holding 90% of the December 2026 debt are still litigating the September 2025 Lightspeed equity transfer. As of September 9, 2026 refinancing talks remain ongoing with no deal reached; NASDAQ: TSAT closed at $47.16 on September 8.", "summarySource": "https://www.telesat.com/press/press-releases/farcast-completes-telesat-lightspeed-antenna-technology-demonstration-milestone/", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: TSAT / TSX: TSAT)", "founded": 1969, "headquarters": "Ottawa, Ontario", "country": "CA", "ceo": "Daniel S. Goldberg", "website": "https://www.telesat.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/telesat.png", "industrySlugs": [ "satellite-mega-constellations", "telecommunications", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/telesat", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/telesat" }, { "slug": "terrapower", "name": "TerraPower", "summary": "TerraPower is a nuclear innovation company founded by Bill Gates with two business lines: the Natrium sodium fast reactor with integrated molten-salt energy storage, and TerraPower Isotopes, a medical-isotope business producing actinium-225 for targeted cancer therapies. In March 2026 the NRC issued Kemmerer Unit 1 the first construction permit for a commercial-scale advanced nuclear plant in the U.S., and on April 23, 2026 TerraPower and contractor Bechtel officially began plant construction in Wyoming, a build expected to mobilize roughly 1,600 workers; on July 21, 2026 TerraPower became the first advanced-reactor developer accepted into the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. In January 2026 TerraPower signed a landmark agreement with Meta to develop up to eight Natrium plants in the U.S., marking a shift from a single demonstration toward a commercial fleet, and on August 14, 2026 it deepened its Korean industrial supply chain with a preliminary joint-business agreement with SK Innovation for South Korea's first commercial Natrium plant, selection of Hyundai Engineering & Construction as EPC contractor for up to eight future Natrium reactors, and a reactor-vessel manufacturing contract with Doosan Enerbility. In August 2026 it named George Wilson, previously SVP of Regulatory Affairs, as its first Chief Nuclear Officer to oversee nuclear safety, licensing, and regulatory strategy, and on August 31 it awarded 12 additional supplier contracts for Kemmerer Unit 1 and an on-site sodium test and fill facility. CEO Chris Levesque told Reuters on September 7, 2026 that Natrium could generate UK electricity by 2034, TerraPower's first market outside the United States, and has said the company still plans to announce a second Natrium project - this one for an unnamed AI data-center customer - before the end of 2026, with construction targeted for 2027. The core reactor business remains pre-revenue, but Natrium has moved from development into full project execution under DOE's ARDP cost-share program, while TerraPower Isotopes already sells actinium-225 commercially to pharmaceutical partners and is building a $450 million second production facility in Philadelphia.", "summarySource": "https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/gates-backed-terrapower-targets-british-nuclear-power-plant-start-by-2034-2026-09-07/", "status": "Active", "founded": 2008, "headquarters": "Bellevue, Washington", "country": "US", "ceo": "Chris Levesque", "website": "https://www.terrapower.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/terrapower.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fission", "energy-storage", "ai-compute", "biotech" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fission", "name": "Nuclear Fission", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fission" }, { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" }, { "slug": "biotech", "name": "Biotech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/biotech" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 8, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/terrapower", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/terrapower" }, { "slug": "tesla", "name": "Tesla", "summary": "Tesla is a vertically integrated automotive, energy storage, and AI company headquartered in Austin, Texas. After building its final Model S and Model X on May 10, 2026 and converting that Fremont line to Optimus, it now manufactures three consumer vehicles (Model 3, Model Y, Cybertruck), sells Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software, operates energy storage and solar businesses, runs an unsupervised Robotaxi service across six US metros (Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa), plus a supervised Bay Area pilot, and is ramping new products including Cybercab (in production at Giga Texas since Feb 2026; tesla.com/robotaxi now lists it as a live fleet vehicle after commercial paid rides began in Austin on September 3, 2026, the same day NHTSA opened audit AQ26002, still open as of September 6), Tesla Semi (now in a commissioning phase at the new Nevada line as it works toward a 50,000-unit/year target), and Optimus (entered production on Fremont's converted first-generation line around August 27-28, 2026, feeding an internal training program rather than customer sales; the V3 public reveal remains undated). Tesla China scheduled a mid-September Cybercab display tour in Beijing and Shanghai that it said is not a China sale or China robotaxi launch. On September 7, 2026 Tesla China offered inventory cash incentives through September 30 of 5,000 yuan on Model 3 and 10,000 yuan on Model Y, with some Model 3 trims also eligible for an 8,000 yuan insurance subsidy, bringing advertised starting prices to 222,500 yuan and 253,500 yuan after all listed benefits. On September 11, 2026 Tesla China launched the refreshed Model Y Performance at 369,000 yuan, with 2-6 week delivery estimates, after three straight months of year-over-year Model Y sales declines in China. CPCA's August breakdown put China retail at 50,047 vehicles (-12.43% YoY) and Giga Shanghai exports at 36,119 (+38.71% YoY) on 86,166 wholesale (+3.57% YoY). In Q2 2026, Tesla generated a record $28.24B in revenue (+26% YoY) on 480,126 vehicle deliveries, though GAAP operating margin narrowed to 1.4% amid heavy AI, Optimus, and Robotaxi investment, and guided to over $25B of full-year 2026 capital expenditure; it had 1.48M active FSD subscriptions and operated 8,704 Supercharger stations.", "summarySource": "https://cnevpost.com/2026/09/11/tesla-launches-model-y-performance-china/", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: TSLA)", "founded": 2003, "headquarters": "Austin, Texas", "country": "US", "ceo": "Elon Musk", "website": "https://www.tesla.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/tesla.png", "industrySlugs": [ "electric-vehicles", "humanoid-robots", "autonomous-vehicles", "robotaxis", "energy-storage", "solar-energy", "artificial-intelligence", "ai-compute", "semiconductors" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" }, { "slug": "humanoid-robots", "name": "Humanoid Robots", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/humanoid-robots" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "robotaxis", "name": "Robotaxis", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/robotaxis" }, { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" }, { "slug": "semiconductors", "name": "Semiconductors", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/semiconductors" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 14, "trackRecord": { "hit": 3, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 3 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/tesla", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/tesla" }, { "slug": "tokamak-energy", "name": "Tokamak Energy", "summary": "Tokamak Energy is a UK fusion and high-temperature superconducting (HTS) company spun out of the UK Atomic Energy Authority in 2009. It now describes itself first as a commercial superconducting and fusion-technologies supplier rather than the builder of its own power plant: the August 2026 Nuclear Fusion Focus Collection published the ST-E1 pilot-plant design, and the company said it will not go on to construct that plant or future pilot plants itself. Its operating machine is ST40, which reached 100 million degrees Celsius in 2022 and closed out 2025 with three records (1 MA plasma current, highest stored energy, triple product up over 30% to about 8 x 10^18 m^-3 keV s) before entering a $52M DOE/DESNZ upgrade that still runs through most of 2026. Demo4 became in November 2025 the first HTS magnet system to reproduce fusion-relevant fields at system level (11.8 tesla, 7 million ampere-turns). In April 2026 Tokamak Energy was named Magnet Systems Partner for the UK government's STEP prototype under a £70M contract to March 2029. TE Magnetics sells that capability commercially (Ridgway Machines acquired in 2025; a 2025 General Atomics/DARPA undersea-propulsion magnet contract; an April 2026 data-center HTS power-distribution study), and the company also supports the FAST superconducting-tokamak project in Japan.", "summarySource": "https://tokamakenergy.com/about-us-fusion-energy-high-temperature-superconducting-magnets/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2009, "headquarters": "Milton Park, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom", "country": "UK", "ceo": "Warrick Matthews", "website": "https://tokamakenergy.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/tokamak-energy.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fusion", "defense", "superconductors" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fusion", "name": "Nuclear Fusion", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fusion" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 0, "missed": 2, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-06", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/tokamak-energy", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/tokamak-energy" }, { "slug": "tsmc", "name": "TSMC", "summary": "Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, founded in Hsinchu in 1987 by Morris Chang, invented the dedicated-foundry business model and now dominates it utterly: 69.9% of the global foundry market in 2025, holding at roughly 73% through the first two quarters of 2026 (Counterpoint Research), with Samsung a distant second at 7%. It is effectively the sole manufacturer of leading-edge AI silicon - Nvidia, Apple, AMD, and Broadcom all fab their flagship chips there - which made it the primary beneficiary of the AI buildout: 2025 revenue hit a record $122.4B (+35.9%), and Q1 2026 revenue grew another 35.1% to $35.9B at a 66.2% gross margin. Q2 2026 lifted high-performance computing to 66% of sales, with 3nm wafer revenue at 30% just behind 5nm at 33% and 2nm contributing its first 3%; analysts now expect 3nm to overtake 5nm as the top revenue node in the second half of 2026. On September 8, 2026 TSMC said it will put ASML High NA EUV into high-volume manufacturing from 2030. Its N2 (2nm) node, the company's first gate-all-around process, entered volume production on schedule in Q4 2025 at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, with the enhanced N2P variant due in H2 2026 and the A16 node (backside power delivery) now slated for 2027 after slipping from late 2026. TSMC raised its 2026 capex guidance to a record $60–64B in July 2026 - the largest capital budget in semiconductor history - while globalizing its footprint: Arizona's Fab 21 has produced 4nm chips at Taiwan-par yields since Q4 2024, and on its July 16 earnings call TSMC pledged roughly $100B more to expand the Arizona campus with at least four additional 2nm-and-below fabs, lifting its total US commitment to about $265B (the largest foreign direct investment in US history); Japan's JASM is building a second Kumamoto fab upgraded to 3nm, now targeted for 2028 after the upgrade pushed back its original late-2027 goal, and the Dresden ESMC fab targets production in late 2027. TSMC is also diversifying beyond logic: on August 10, 2026, it announced a ~$6.3B joint venture with Sony (Sony 60%/TSMC 40%) to build a Kumamoto image-sensor fab targeting 2029 mass production. A January 2026 US–Taiwan trade deal exempts TSMC from new 25% Section 232 semiconductor tariffs in proportion to its US buildout. The overhang remains geopolitical: the vast majority of its leading-edge capacity sits on Taiwan, at the center of US–China tension.", "summarySource": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC", "status": "Public", "founded": 1987, "headquarters": "Hsinchu, Taiwan", "country": "TW", "ceo": "C.C. Wei (Chairman & CEO)", "website": "https://www.tsmc.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/tsmc.png", "industrySlugs": [ "semiconductors" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "semiconductors", "name": "Semiconductors", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/semiconductors" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 13, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 2, "missed": 0, "total": 3 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/tsmc", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/tsmc" }, { "slug": "ula", "name": "United Launch Alliance", "summary": "United Launch Alliance is Boeing and Lockheed Martin's launch-services joint venture for U.S. national security, NASA, and commercial customers. ULA says it has achieved more than 150 consecutive launches since 2006, and on July 2, 2026 it retired Atlas V from the Amazon campaign by flying Amazon's eighth and final Atlas V Leo mission (LEO 8), taking ULA's Amazon Leo deliveries to 226 satellites across eight Atlas V flights and shifting the remaining Amazon backlog entirely onto Vulcan Centaur. Vulcan has been grounded since its February 12, 2026 USSF-87 mission, when one of its four Northrop Grumman GEM 63XL solid rocket boosters suffered a nozzle anomaly during ascent; the U.S. Space Force paused NSSL Vulcan launches pending the investigation, and as of September 10, 2026 ULA had still not posted a return-to-flight date. Trackers still list the first Vulcan Amazon flight, LV-01, as no earlier than late September 2026 (NET September 30, status TBD). ULA completed a wet dress rehearsal of a LEO-optimized Vulcan/Centaur V at SLC-41 on August 6, 2026, and Blue Origin - after tracing its May 28, 2026 New Glenn pad explosion to a BE-4 engine oxygen-valve fault - began retrofitting the same valve on BE-4 engines already in ULA's inventory. ULA's public newsroom has not issued a release since naming Mark Peller president and CEO on August 17, 2026. As of September 10, 2026 ULA had flown just five times in 2026 (the USSF-87 Vulcan mission plus four Atlas V Amazon Leo flights), far short of its 18-22 launch goal, leaving SpaceX as the only provider actively flying National Security Space Launch payloads. The grounding has also strained ULA's finances: in Q2 2026 SEC filings, both parents disclosed matching credit backstops for ULA - Lockheed Martin and Boeing each agreed in May 2026 to guarantee up to $500 million of ULA credit facilities maturing July 30, 2027 - and on August 18, 2026 ULA priced $1.5 billion of private bonds across four tranches to expand Decatur assembly and pad upgrades at Cape Canaveral SLC-41 and Vandenberg SLC-3E. Sale talks (Sierra Space was the 2024 bidder) have not closed.", "summarySource": "https://www.techtimes.com/articles/327126/20260909/space-forces-76b-satellite-program-has-one-rocket-spacex-stands-alone.htm", "status": "Active (50/50 joint venture: Boeing & Lockheed Martin)", "founded": 2006, "headquarters": "Denver, Colorado", "country": "US", "ceo": "Mark Peller", "website": "https://www.ulalaunch.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/ula.png", "industrySlugs": [ "rockets", "defense", "satellite-mega-constellations" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "rockets", "name": "Rockets", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/rockets" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "satellite-mega-constellations", "name": "Satellite Mega-Constellations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/satellite-mega-constellations" } ], "parent": { "name": "Boeing & Lockheed Martin", "companySlug": "boeing", "relationship": "joint-venture", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Launch_Alliance" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/ula", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/ula" }, { "slug": "unitree-robotics", "name": "Unitree Robotics", "summary": "Unitree Robotics is a Hangzhou-based civilian robotics company building quadrupeds, humanoids, dexterous hands, robot arms, and core robot components. After leading the market for publicly sold quadruped robots, Unitree expanded aggressively into humanoids with H1, G1, R1, and H2 at price points far below most Western peers, becoming the world's top humanoid seller by volume in 2025 (5,500+ units sold at ~32% global share) and reporting roughly 18,000 cumulative humanoids produced by August 2026. Its STAR Market prospectus reports 1.71 billion yuan (~$250 million) of 2025 revenue, adjusted net profit around 590-600 million yuan at a 60% gross margin, and more than 30,000 quadrupeds shipped from 2022 to September 2025. On July 3, 2026 Unitree secured CSRC registration approval for a Shanghai STAR Market IPO - clearing review in a record 104 days - priced the offering at 150.80 yuan per share on August 5-6 (proceeds of roughly 6.1 billion yuan, ~$904 million), and began trading on the STAR Market on August 19, 2026 under ticker 688836 as the first listed Chinese humanoid-robot maker; shares opened 629% above the IPO price at 1,100 yuan (an opening market cap of about 445 billion yuan, ~$62-66 billion) before closing the debut at 845 yuan (+460%). DeepSeek joined the offering as a strategic placement investor (933,400 shares, ~$20.8M) and the two companies agreed to co-develop AI models and embodied-intelligence technology. Nvidia adopted Unitree's H2 body for its Isaac GR00T reference humanoid (unveiled at COMPUTEX in June 2026), while a June 2026 U.S. Pentagon Section 1260H listing and a July 28, 2026 FCC Covered List addition have created headwinds for Unitree's U.S. research, government-affiliated, and commercial customers. Actual H1 2026 results reported mid-August beat the prospectus's revenue guidance (RMB 1.152B, +48.54% YoY) but confirmed continued margin pressure (adjusted net profit down 19.34% YoY to RMB 244M). The stock has kept sliding: it closed September 9, 2026 at 513.93 yuan, about 39% below the 845-yuan debut close and 53% below the 1,100-yuan first-day high, though still more than 3x the 150.80 yuan IPO price, amid bubble-risk debate and founder Wang Xingxing's own remarks that humanoids remain years from broad factory deployment.", "summarySource": "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-02/unitree-plunges-50-from-peak-in-fast-reversal-after-huge-debut-pop", "status": "Public (Shanghai STAR Market: 688836) - began trading August 19, 2026, the first listed Chinese humanoid-robot maker", "founded": 2016, "headquarters": "Hangzhou, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Wang Xingxing", "website": "https://www.unitree.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/unitree-robotics.png", "industrySlugs": [ "humanoid-robots", "artificial-intelligence", "industrial-automation", "warehouse-automation" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "humanoid-robots", "name": "Humanoid Robots", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/humanoid-robots" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/unitree-robotics", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/unitree-robotics" }, { "slug": "valar-atomics", "name": "Valar Atomics", "summary": "Valar Atomics is an El Segundo-based nuclear startup founded in 2023 by Isaiah Taylor that develops small, mass-manufacturable high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (TRISO fuel, graphite moderator, helium coolant) intended to be deployed by the hundreds on grid-independent 'gigasites' producing power, hydrogen, and carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. As one of 11 projects in the DOE Reactor Pilot Program, its 100 kWt Ward250 test reactor at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab achieved fueled criticality on June 18, 2026 - the first DOE-authorized reactor built and operated outside a national laboratory - then became the first of the pilot reactors to ramp to full power on June 23, and on July 1 generated 100 kW while powering Nvidia Blackwell chips in a live demo. The company and Nvidia are now exploring a 30 MW nearly waterless nuclear-powered AI data center in Orangeville, Utah. Valar has raised roughly $1.6B total, after closing a $1B Series B on August 3, 2026 led by Sequoia Capital (Shaun Maguire, who joins the board) that tripled its valuation to $6B, alongside a separate $200M credit facility led by Erebor Bank and J.P. Morgan (with Crescent Cove and Hercules Capital participating); the company says the round funds reactor-manufacturing factories to scale output toward thousands of units a year plus in-house TRISO fuel production, building on its September 2025 selection for DOE's Fuel Line Pilot Program. The round follows a $450M equity-and-debt round at a $2B valuation in March 2026 backed by Palmer Luckey and Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, a $130M Series A led by Snowpoint Ventures, and a $19M seed led by Riot Ventures. It is also building Ward One, a 100 kW research microreactor in the Philippines with the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, and is a co-plaintiff (alongside Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Florida, Arizona, Last Energy, and Deep Fission) in a lawsuit seeking to exempt small test reactors from full NRC licensing, now stayed until September 29, 2026 for settlement talks. CEO Isaiah Taylor says Valar hopes to start selling power on a test basis in 2027 and become fully commercial in 2028.", "summarySource": "https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/03/raising-1b-funding-valar-atomics-plans-mass-produce-small-nuclear-reactors-ai-industry/", "status": "Active", "founded": 2023, "headquarters": "El Segundo, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Isaiah Taylor", "website": "https://www.valaratomics.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/valar-atomics.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fission", "ai-compute", "synthetic-fuels", "hydrogen" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fission", "name": "Nuclear Fission", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fission" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-04", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/valar-atomics", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/valar-atomics" }, { "slug": "varda", "name": "Varda Space Industries", "summary": "Varda Space Industries manufactures materials in orbit and brings them back to Earth, a business no company had ever run commercially before it. Founded in 2021 by former SpaceX Dragon engineer Will Bruey and Founders Fund partner Delian Asparouhov, it builds the W-Series: free-flying spacecraft that process pharmaceuticals in microgravity and then return the product inside a capsule that reenters at over 18,000 mph and lands under parachute, usually at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia. The commercial logic is that microgravity produces crystal structures and morphologies that gravity makes impossible on the ground, and Varda proved it on its first flight by growing and recovering the metastable Form III of ritonavir, an HIV antiviral. Six missions have flown since 2023, and five of the six capsules made it home; the fourth, W-4, spent nearly a year on orbit while Varda evaluated a propellant-feed problem before closing out the mission with a disposal burn in May 2026 rather than a recovery. W-5 returned in January 2026 as the first full mission on Varda's own vertically integrated satellite bus, carrying a U.S. Navy payload, and W-6 returned in May 2026 flying thermal-protection and autonomous-navigation experiments for NASA and defense customers under the AFRL's Prometheus program. That second business, selling the capsule as a cheap, high-cadence hypersonic reentry testbed, now runs alongside the pharmaceutical work, and in October 2025 Varda added a third line, agreeing with United Semiconductors to grow semiconductor crystals in microgravity for autonomous-systems, sensing, AI, and defense customers. In May 2026 United Therapeutics signed on to develop microgravity formulations for rare pulmonary disease, the first time a publicly traded pharmaceutical company has spent its own capital on commercial drug manufacturing in space, and Varda leased a former Mattel manufacturing plant in El Segundo in early 2026 to scale spacecraft production to match.", "summarySource": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/varda-space-industries-successfully-reenters-w-6-validating-autonomous-navigation-and-advanced-thermal-protection-systems-302775804.html", "status": "Active", "founded": 2021, "headquarters": "El Segundo, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Will Bruey", "website": "https://www.varda.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/varda.png", "industrySlugs": [ "orbital-economy", "biotech", "defense", "semiconductors" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "biotech", "name": "Biotech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/biotech" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" }, { "slug": "semiconductors", "name": "Semiconductors", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/semiconductors" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 2, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 0, "missed": 1, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-01", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/varda", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/varda" }, { "slug": "vast", "name": "Vast", "summary": "Vast was founded in 2021 by Jed McCaleb - the programmer-entrepreneur behind eDonkey, Mt. Gox, Ripple, and Stellar - around a long-term thesis of artificial-gravity space stations that let humans live in orbit without the health toll of weightlessness, and a near-term race to fly the world's first commercial space station. McCaleb was the company's sole backer for its first years and has said he is prepared to put up to $1 billion of his fortune into the venture. Vast came out of stealth in September 2022, acquired rocket startup Launcher in February 2023 (whose founder Max Haot became CEO in August 2023, with McCaleb moving to chairman), and in May 2023 signed SpaceX to launch Haven-1, a single-module four-crew station (45 m³ habitable volume), plus Dragon crew missions. The company has taken an incremental, hardware-rich path: it pressure-tested the Haven-1 flight primary structure beyond nominal conditions in late 2025, passed a NASA-STD-5001 pressurization proof test on a separate primary-structure qualification article at its Mojave facility in February 2026, and its Haven Demo testbed satellite launched November 2, 2025 on SpaceX's Bandwagon-4, completed 49 test objectives validating avionics, GNC, solar arrays, propulsion, and Starlink-based communications, and executed a controlled deorbit on February 4, 2026. Haven-1 - originally targeted for August 2025, then May 2026 - entered clean-room integration in January 2026, when Vast re-baselined launch readiness to Q1 2027; the thermal control system was integrated in June 2026, and as of September 11, 2026 Vast's site still shows flight solar arrays in acceptance inspection and the Vast Control Unit in EMC testing, with no shipment of the flight vehicle to NASA's Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio announced. Momentum accelerated through 2026: NASA selected Vast in February for the sixth private astronaut mission to the ISS (no earlier than summer 2027). On September 9, 2026 at the International Space Summit in Paris, ESA on behalf of Greece signed for Dr. Adrianos Golemis as mission specialist, the third named crew member alongside commander Thomas Pesquet (France) and pilot Ales Svoboda (Czech Republic); the fourth seat is still unannounced and all assignments remain subject to ISS Multilateral Crew Operations Panel approval. In March Vast closed a $500M round ($300M Series A led by Balerion Space Ventures plus $200M debt), bringing total private capital invested to roughly $1 billion across a team of 1,000+ employees. In April 2026 Vast unveiled two new hardware lines at the Space Symposium: the Vast Astronaut Flight Suit and the Large Docking Adapter. Vast also launched a 15 kW satellite-bus product line, opened Houston and Paris offices, and signed agreements with France, the UK Space Agency, ESA/Czech Republic, and others. Its nine-module Haven-2 (first module 2028, full build-out by 2032) is its bid for NASA's CLD Phase 2 ISS-successor competition. NASA posted a CLDC presolicitation on September 4, 2026 saying the final RFP is now expected at the end of September 2026, with proposals due 60 days later. On July 22, 2026, Vast also launched a Special Programs division led by former Slingshot Aerospace CEO Melanie Stricklan.", "summarySource": "https://www.vastspace.com/updates/greece-vast-esa-first-greek-astronaut-private-mission-nasa", "status": "Private", "founded": 2021, "headquarters": "Long Beach, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Max Haot", "website": "https://www.vastspace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/vast.png", "industrySlugs": [ "space-stations", "orbital-economy", "defense", "human-spaceflight" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "space-stations", "name": "Space Stations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/space-stations" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 2, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/vast", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/vast" }, { "slug": "vertex-pharmaceuticals", "name": "Vertex Pharmaceuticals", "summary": "Vertex Pharmaceuticals is the world leader in cystic fibrosis (CF) and one of biotech's few large-cap, highly profitable, self-funded innovators. Its CFTR-modulator franchise - anchored by Trikafta/Kaftrio and the next-generation once-daily Alyftrek (vanzacaftor/tezacaftor/deutivacaftor, FDA-approved December 2024) - treats the large majority of the addressable CF population and generated the bulk of $12.0B in FY2025 revenue, with $4.0B of GAAP net income. Vertex is now deploying that cash flow to diversify well beyond CF. It commercialized Casgevy (exagamglogene autotemcel), the first CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing therapy ever approved, for sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia, partnered with CRISPR Therapeutics. In January 2025 it launched Journavx (suzetrigine), the first genuinely new class of pain medicine in over two decades - an oral, non-opioid NaV1.8 inhibitor. Its pipeline includes zimislecel (VX-880), a stem-cell-derived islet therapy that has rendered type 1 diabetes patients insulin-independent in trials; inaxaplin for APOL1-mediated kidney disease; and povetacicept (from the $4.9B Alpine acquisition) for IgA nephropathy, with an FDA decision due November 30, 2026. On September 1, 2026 it completed the ~$10B acquisition of endocrine-disease specialist Crinetics Pharmaceuticals - its largest-ever deal - adding Palsonify (paltusotine), the first once-daily oral acromegaly drug, already launched in the US and approved in the EU, plus Phase 3 candidate atumelnant. Jasper van Grunsven joined on September 8, 2026 as EVP and Chief Pain and New Product Planning Officer to run the pain franchise and global new-product planning. Vertex pushes the envelope by turning single-gene biology into functional cures.", "summarySource": "https://bostonlifesciencestimes.com/2026/09/vertex-completes-10-billion-acquisition-of-crinetics-expands-leadership-team/", "status": "Public", "founded": 1989, "headquarters": "Boston, Massachusetts", "country": "US", "ceo": "Reshma Kewalramani", "website": "https://www.vrtx.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/vertex-pharmaceuticals.png", "industrySlugs": [ "biotech", "gene-editing", "cell-therapy", "endocrinology" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "biotech", "name": "Biotech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/biotech" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/vertex-pharmaceuticals", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/vertex-pharmaceuticals" }, { "slug": "vertical-aerospace", "name": "Vertical Aerospace", "summary": "Vertical Aerospace is a Bristol, UK-based eVTOL developer building Valo, a piloted electric air taxi, and is the last major independent European player after the collapses of Lilium and Volocopter. Founded in 2016 by OVO Energy's Stephen Fitzpatrick, it listed on the NYSE in 2021 and survived a 2024 financial restructuring that made Mudrick Capital its controlling shareholder. In April 2026 its VX4 prototype completed the world's first piloted two-way eVTOL transition flight under civil DOA regulatory oversight - only the second company globally to achieve piloted transition - and its third full-scale prototype joined the test campaign in June 2026. The production aircraft, unveiled as Valo in December 2025, is backed by ~1,500 conditional pre-orders worth ~$6B from American Airlines, Avolon, Bristow, GOL, and Japan Airlines, plus later operator MoUs (Sigma Air Mobility, VIC Properties at Portugal's Pinheirinho estate). On July 13, 2026 Vertical re-baselined its UK CAA/EASA type certification target from 2028 to 2029. An early production assembly facility at Cotswold Airport is still targeted for Q3 2026 but had not been publicly confirmed open as of September 10. Cash was ~$134M after an ~$100M August financing package; the stock closed at $0.58 on September 9, 2026 (market cap about $99M). CEO Stuart Simpson is on a September New York investor roadshow (Jefferies, Deutsche Bank, H.C. Wainwright) pitching the hybrid-electric defense variant alongside the 2029 certification plan.", "summarySource": "https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/evtl/", "status": "Public (NYSE: EVTL)", "founded": 2016, "headquarters": "Bristol, United Kingdom", "country": "UK", "ceo": "Stuart Simpson", "website": "https://vertical-aerospace.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/vertical-aerospace.png", "industrySlugs": [ "evtol", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "evtol", "name": "eVTOL", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/evtol" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 3, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/vertical-aerospace", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/vertical-aerospace" }, { "slug": "voyager-technologies", "name": "Voyager Technologies", "summary": "Voyager Technologies is a Denver-based defense-technology and space-infrastructure company best known for leading Starlab, the international joint venture building a commercial successor to the International Space Station. Founded in October 2019 by Dylan Taylor as Voyager Space Holdings, the company grew by rolling up twelve space and defense firms - including Altius Space Machines and Pioneer Astronautics (2020), The Launch Company, Valley Tech Systems and Nanoracks (2021), Space Micro (2022), ZIN Technologies (2023), and Estes Energetics, ExoTerra Resource and LEOcloud (2025). Through Nanoracks it owns the Bishop Airlock, the first and only permanent commercial module on the ISS, operating since December 2020. Starlab won a $160M NASA Commercial LEO Destinations award in December 2021 (later raised to $217.5M) and evolved into Starlab Space LLC, a US-led JV with Airbus, Mitsubishi Corporation and MDA Space, with Palantir supplying station software, Hilton designing crew quarters and Northrop Grumman providing Cygnus resupply. The single-launch, 8-meter-class station - with roughly half the ISS's pressurized volume - is contracted to fly on SpaceX's Starship, now targeted for 2029, and completed its Commercial Critical Design Review with NASA in February 2026, clearing the way for flight manufacturing. Voyager rebranded to Voyager Technologies in early 2025 to emphasize national security and went public on NYSE in June 2025, raising $382.8M and briefly touching a ~$3.8B valuation. Its Defense & National Security segment - solid and electric propulsion, energetics, signals intelligence and communications - is its fastest-growing business and put it on the Anduril-led team named among the Space Force's Golden Dome space-based-interceptor awardees in April 2026. On July 13, 2026 it closed its acquisition of Pittsburgh lunar-lander developer Astrobotic Technology ($162M cash and stock plus up to $129M in earnouts and $9M assumed debt), rebranding the unit Voyager Lunar Systems under continuing CEO John Thornton, and the same day disclosed a roughly $298M NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services task order won under the deal - funding the Peregrine-2 lander to carry three NASA payloads to the Moon's Gruithuisen Domes in 2028 - adding an end-to-end lunar business alongside space stations and defense; the nearer-term proof point is Griffin-1, an infrastructure-class lander carrying 10 NASA/ESA/commercial payloads that is now in environmental testing at NASA JPL ahead of a Falcon Heavy launch no earlier than November 30, 2026. As of August 28, 2026 Voyager traded around a $2.1B market cap (down from a post-earnings peak near $2.55B in mid-August), posted $166.4M of 2025 revenue (net loss $116.1M), held $585.5M of total liquidity as of June 30, 2026, and had closed an upsized $250M J.P. Morgan-led credit facility on July 6, 2026. Q2 2026 results reported August 3 showed record revenue of $52.7M (up 51% sequentially), record bookings of $113.0M, and a record $335.5M backlog, prompting Voyager to raise 2026 revenue guidance to $275-305M from a prior $230-255M range; Starlab separately has signed over $500M of commercial reservations ahead of launch. Since then Voyager has added an August 4 Raytheon SM-3 missile-interceptor propulsion contract and an August 10 Space Force space-to-space communications contract to its Defense & National Security backlog. NASA's CLD Phase 2 industry-feedback window closed July 27, 2026 as scheduled; as of August 29, 2026 NASA had not yet issued the final RFP it had been tracking toward late August, with an award still expected in early-to-spring 2027.", "summarySource": "https://www.benzinga.com/markets/earnings/26/08/60890783/voyager-technologies-stock-soars-on-q2-double-beat-strong-outlook", "status": "Public", "founded": 2019, "headquarters": "Denver, Colorado", "country": "US", "ceo": "Dylan Taylor", "website": "https://www.voyagertechnologies.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/voyager-technologies.png", "industrySlugs": [ "space-stations", "orbital-economy", "defense", "lunar-infrastructure" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "space-stations", "name": "Space Stations", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/space-stations" }, { "slug": "orbital-economy", "name": "Orbital Economy", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/orbital-economy" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 2, "missed": 0, "total": 4 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-08-29", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/voyager-technologies", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/voyager-technologies" }, { "slug": "waymo", "name": "Waymo", "summary": "Waymo is Alphabet's autonomous-driving company and operator of the world's first autonomous ride-hailing service. It serves paid riders in 14 U.S. metro areas through Waymo One after opening public rides in Denver, San Diego, and Tampa on September 1, 2026, has surpassed 20 million lifetime rides, and has held roughly 500,000 paid robotaxi rides per week, with a goal of clearing 1 million per week by year-end. Waymo has offered public rides on the Ojai - a ground-up purpose-built robotaxi co-developed with Zeekr - in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix since May 2026, and Denver and San Diego riders can now only book the Ojai. International launches are queued in Tokyo and London after a $16B February 2026 funding round at a $126B post-money valuation. Growth has come alongside mounting regulatory and safety scrutiny: a string of federal probes, two vehicle recalls, a July 4 San Francisco gridlock incident, new federal legislation targeting AV interference with first responders, and an August 7 Dallas crash in which a pedestrian struck by another vehicle was thrown into the path of an unoccupied Waymo and later died - an incident Waymo says its vehicle detected and slowed for, with early reporting pointing to the other driver as the primary cause.", "summarySource": "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-01/waymo-expands-paid-robotaxi-rides-to-denver-san-diego-and-tampa", "status": "Subsidiary (Alphabet)", "founded": 2009, "headquarters": "Mountain View, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Dmitri Dolgov (Co-CEO) & Tekedra Mawakana (Co-CEO)", "website": "https://waymo.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/waymo.png", "industrySlugs": [ "robotaxis", "autonomous-vehicles", "artificial-intelligence" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "robotaxis", "name": "Robotaxis", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/robotaxis" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": { "name": "Alphabet Inc.", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "subsidiary", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/waymo", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/waymo" }, { "slug": "weride", "name": "WeRide", "summary": "WeRide is a commercial-stage autonomous-driving company building products from Level 2 ADAS to Level 4 robotaxis, robobuses, robovans, and robosweepers. It operates or tests in 60+ cities across 13 countries, holds autonomous-driving permits in nine markets (China, the UAE, Singapore, France, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, the US, and Spain), and is scaling a global L4 fleet of about 3,400 vehicles, including more than 1,800 robotaxis - including fully driverless commercial service in Dubai and public service in Singapore - with Uber, Grab, Geely Farizon, Renault, GAC, Chery, and other partners. Europe has become a fast-moving front in 2026: WeRide, Uber and AVOMO received Spain's first national Level 4 passenger-vehicle permit from the DGT on September 10, 2026 (the first EU national approval for WeRide's GXR), after announcing a Madrid commercial robotaxi pilot in early June; the Slovak government backed a plan for WeRide to roll out its full Level 4 portfolio nationwide, and on June 17 the two partners announced plans for commercial robotaxi service in the Greater Zurich Region - adding to existing projects in France, Switzerland, and Belgium. On June 22 WeRide, Geely Farizon, and Hong Kong operator Kwoon Chung agreed to jointly build a mass-produced right-hand-drive robotaxi off the GXR platform, with Hong Kong the first deployment market and a planned rollout to Singapore, the UK, Japan, and Australia. In July 2026 WeRide accelerated the global rollout of its one-stage end-to-end L2++ intelligent-driving solution - co-developed with Bosch and integrated with Bosch's automotive-grade domain controller - beginning on-road testing and localization in Germany, France, and Japan, with production design wins now spanning 30+ vehicle programs at Chery and GAC and cumulative WRD 3.0 deliveries topping 30,000 units, against a company target of 100,000 by year-end 2026 and 500,000 in 2027. On August 3, 2026 WeRide announced a strategic partnership with Danish shared-mobility operator GreenMobility to bring Level 4 autonomous ride-hailing to Denmark, its sixth European market and first in the Nordic region, targeting public service in the first half of 2027 pending Danish regulatory approval. Reporting record Q2 2026 revenue on August 12 (gross margin a record 37.5%, up from 28.1% a year earlier), CEO Tony Han said WeRide is now in talks with regulators in Australia and eyeing South Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia as further expansion markets. The Madrid commercial launch is now in DGT-authorized mapping and testing after the September 10 national permit, while Zurich, Hong Kong, and Slovakia remain in pre-launch or early testing phases.", "summarySource": "https://weride.ai/posts/flzoem3a9it3lta5gbdg6n4s", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: WRD; HKEX: 0800)", "founded": 2017, "headquarters": "Guangzhou, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Tony Han", "website": "https://www.weride.ai/en", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/weride.png", "industrySlugs": [ "robotaxis", "autonomous-vehicles", "artificial-intelligence", "logistics", "electric-vehicles", "smart-cities" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "robotaxis", "name": "Robotaxis", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/robotaxis" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" }, { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 10, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-11", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/weride", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/weride" }, { "slug": "westinghouse", "name": "Westinghouse Electric Company", "summary": "Westinghouse Electric Company is the largest Western nuclear technology company, owned 51% by Brookfield (with institutional partners) and 49% by uranium miner Cameco since their $7.9B acquisition closed in November 2023. Nearly half of the world's operating nuclear reactors are based on Westinghouse technology, and its fuel and operating-plant-services businesses serve PWR, BWR, and VVER fleets globally - generating about $5.0B of revenue in 2025. Its flagship AP1000 reactor is the only fully licensed advanced large reactor operating in the US (Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia), with four more units operating in China, a global pipeline Westinghouse counts at up to 91 potential reactors (~105 GWe), and orders or advanced programs in Poland, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. In October 2025 the US government announced an $80B+ strategic partnership with Westinghouse, Brookfield, and Cameco to build a fleet of AP1000 and AP300 reactors across the United States, followed in June 2026 by a conditional $17.5B DOE loan commitment to finance long-lead components for up to 10 AP1000s. On July 31, 2026, Westinghouse confidentially filed a draft S-1 registration statement for a US IPO; deal terms from the 2025 government partnership reportedly give the US government an option to take an 8% stake if Westinghouse's valuation reaches $30B. Alongside the large-reactor buildout, Westinghouse is developing the 330 MWe AP300 small modular reactor and the 5 MWe eVinci microreactor, which is slated for first fueled testing at Idaho National Laboratory and was selected for deployment at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Under CEO Dan Sumner, appointed in April 2026, the company sits at the center of the US nuclear renaissance.", "summarySource": "https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/cameco-announces-go-public-plans-for-westinghouse", "status": "Private (Brookfield & Cameco)", "founded": 1999, "headquarters": "Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania", "country": "US", "ceo": "Dan Sumner", "website": "https://westinghousenuclear.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/westinghouse.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fission", "ai-compute", "energy-storage", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fission", "name": "Nuclear Fission", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fission" }, { "slug": "energy-storage", "name": "Batteries & Energy Storage", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/energy-storage" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": { "name": "Brookfield & Cameco", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "subsidiary", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Company" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 12, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/westinghouse", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/westinghouse" }, { "slug": "wing", "name": "Wing", "summary": "Wing is a drone-delivery company launched from Google's X in 2012 that is scaling small-package logistics in dense residential areas. It surpassed 1 million commercial deliveries by mid-2026 and, on September 3, 2026, said it is making thousands of deliveries to homes each day across what it calls the largest residential drone-delivery network in the United States. Live U.S. metros include Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Charlotte, Greater Houston (13 Walmart locations), and Greater Orlando, where the July 29, 2026 Florida launch from two Walmart Supercenters is still the only live pair - Ocoee, a second Clermont store, and Haines City had not been announced as open as of September 4, 2026. Wing's coast-to-coast Walmart partnership - co-credited with Zipline for Walmart crossing 1 million total drone deliveries on May 29, 2026 - is heading for 270+ store locations across nearly 20 U.S. markets by 2027, and Wing has begun its first national quick-service-restaurant pilot with Papa John's. Greater St. Louis remains in local permitting: on September 7, 2026 the Webster-Kirkwood Times reported a planned 18-drone nest on about 30 parking spaces at the Kirkwood Walmart, following an August 19 Planning and Zoning hearing. Wing still has not named a launch date for its planned Bay Area residential service in the metro where the company was founded.", "summarySource": "https://dronexl.co/2026/09/04/wing-walmart-largest-drone-network-amazon-500-cities/", "status": "Subsidiary (Alphabet Inc.)", "founded": 2012, "headquarters": "Palo Alto, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Adam Woodworth", "website": "https://wing.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/wing.png", "industrySlugs": [ "drone-delivery" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "drone-delivery", "name": "Drone Delivery", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/drone-delivery" } ], "parent": { "name": "Alphabet Inc.", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "subsidiary", "source": "https://wing.com/about" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 3, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/wing", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/wing" }, { "slug": "wisk-aero", "name": "Wisk Aero", "summary": "Wisk Aero is Boeing's wholly-owned autonomous air taxi subsidiary, pursuing the industry's most distinctive strategy: skipping piloted service entirely. Its Generation 6 aircraft - the first candidate for FAA type certification of an autonomous eVTOL - carries four passengers with no pilot aboard, flown by onboard automation under ground-based multi-vehicle supervisors. Formed in 2019 as a Boeing–Kitty Hawk joint venture carrying forward the Cora program (Boeing took full ownership in 2023), Wisk has flown 1,750+ test flights across six aircraft generations. Gen 6 made its first flight in December 2025, a second aircraft joined the certification campaign in May 2026, and in March 2026 Wisk and Texas were selected under the White House-backed eIPP to lead the introduction of autonomous air taxi flight in the U.S. Launch markets are Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami around 2030, with Brisbane targeted by the 2032 Olympics. On August 10, 2026, Boeing agreed to sell Wisk (with SkyGrid and Boeing's Insitu unit) to Archer Aviation for a roughly 16.5% Archer stake plus warrants, a deal expected to close by year end 2026; Archer says it will use an exploratory period to decide how to fold Wisk's autonomy technology into its own Halo and Thunder programs, and both companies say Gen 6's fate beyond the current test campaign is not yet finalized.", "summarySource": "https://wisk.aero/newsroom/second-gen6-aircraft", "status": "Private (Boeing subsidiary; pending acquisition by Archer Aviation)", "founded": 2019, "headquarters": "Mountain View, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Sebastien Vigneron", "website": "https://wisk.aero", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/wisk-aero.png", "industrySlugs": [ "evtol", "autonomous-vehicles" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "evtol", "name": "eVTOL", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/evtol" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" } ], "parent": { "name": "Boeing", "companySlug": "boeing", "relationship": "subsidiary", "source": "https://investors.boeing.com/investors/news/press-release-details/2026/Archer-to-Shape-Physical-AI-Future-of-Aerospace-and-Defense-with-Acquisition-of-Boeings-Wisk-Aero-Insitu-and-SkyGrid-Subsidiaries-Boeing-to-Invest-in-Archer-and-Collaborate/default.aspx" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-10", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/wisk-aero", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/wisk-aero" }, { "slug": "x-energy", "name": "X-energy", "summary": "X-energy is an advanced nuclear and fuel company commercializing the 80 MWe Xe-100 reactor and its TRISO-X fuel platform. In April 2026 the company priced an upsized IPO to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker XE, raising ~$1.1B in net proceeds, and on August 13, 2026 reported Q2 2026 revenue and grant income of $54.6M (up 154% year over year) alongside $1.9B of total liquidity, while the DOE formally notified X-energy that its ARDP cooperative agreement will receive up to an additional $1B, raising the government's total ARDP cost-share to as much as $2.115B. Shares closed at $14.93 on September 11, 2026 (~$6.1B market cap on 406.37M shares), still below the $23 April IPO price after a slide from the $17.71 Sept 4 close. The next public licensing gate for Dow's four-unit Long Mott plant at Seadrift, Texas, is an NRC uncontested construction-permit hearing set for September 22, 2026 in Port Lavaca, with staff targeting a final safety evaluation in November 2026 and a construction-permit decision around Q1 2027. TRISO-X holds the first-ever Part 70 HALEU fuel license, expanded its Oak Ridge campus to roughly 180 acres, started TX-1 interior buildout on August 24, and on August 11 extended its Oak Ridge National Laboratory fuel CRADA by 30 months. The company also joined DOE's Project Prometheus AI initiative with NVIDIA and AWS, doubled nuclear-grade graphite supply with SGL Carbon, and signed a definitive LEU/HALEU enrichment agreement with Centrus Energy - underpinning an 11.5 GW, 144-unit pipeline that includes the Amazon-backed Cascade project. A promised ~1 GW investor-owned-utility agreement has still not been named. The company remains pre-revenue from commercial reactor operations.", "summarySource": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/20/2026-16975/long-mott-energy-llc-long-mott-generating-station-notice-of-hearing", "status": "Public (NASDAQ: XE)", "founded": 2009, "headquarters": "Rockville, Maryland", "country": "US", "ceo": "Clay Sell", "website": "https://x-energy.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/x-energy.png", "industrySlugs": [ "nuclear-fission", "ai-compute" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "nuclear-fission", "name": "Nuclear Fission", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/nuclear-fission" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 4, "trackRecord": null, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/x-energy", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/x-energy" }, { "slug": "xai", "name": "xAI", "summary": "xAI is Elon Musk's artificial-intelligence company - founded in March 2023, merged with the X social platform in March 2025, acquired by SpaceX in a $250B all-stock deal on February 2, 2026, and rebranded SpaceXAI on July 6, 2026. It builds the Grok model family, whose latest release, Grok 4.6 (August 12, 2026), reuses Grok 4.5's foundation with improved fine-tuning for long-running agent tasks and coding, scoring 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index to match OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol; Musk said on September 2 that the 2.1-trillion-parameter Grok 4.7 was about 10 days out (around September 12), and as of September 9 it had not yet shipped. Grok Imagine remains the image-and-video generator Musk declared 'done' on July 5, 2026, and Grok features reached ~117 million monthly active users by March 2026 (still the most recent official figure), third in the US behind ChatGPT and Gemini. Its Memphis-area Colossus supercomputer complex - roughly 555,000 Nvidia GPUs expanding toward 2 GW and 1 million GPUs, including Colossus 3 ('MACROHARDRR') and a fourth building, 'Minihard' - has become a business in itself, leased to Anthropic ($1.25B/month for all of Colossus 1), Google ($920M/month from October 2026) and Reflection AI ($150M/month). On August 31, 2026 the Pentagon put Starshield AI's Grok for Government live on GenAI.mil at Impact Level 5 alongside ChatGPT Mil, giving about 3 million DoD personnel access; GenAI.mil had already onboarded more than 1.7 million unique users. On September 3, xAI opened Grok Bot to enterprises, with free usage for Grok and Cursor Enterprise customers. A federal judge denied xAI's preliminary injunction against Minnesota's AI 'nudification' ban on or around September 4, 2026, leaving fines of up to $500,000 per violation in force while xAI appeals to the Eighth Circuit. The combined SpaceX went public on June 12, 2026 in history's largest IPO (~$85.7B raised), fell to a 52-week low of $104.83 on August 3 amid concern over xAI's compute spending, then rebounded to close at $153.47 on September 8, 2026 (market cap about $2.08T), just ahead of a third lockup expiry on September 9 that makes about 319 million more shares eligible to trade; on August 14 SpaceX closed its $60B Cursor (Anysphere) acquisition. The roughly 6-trillion-parameter Grok 5 is still training on Colossus 2 after slipping past two target windows, with no confirmed release date.", "summarySource": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/31/the-pentagon-now-has-its-own-version-of-chatgpt-and-grok/", "status": "Public - AI & social-media division of SpaceX (Nasdaq: SPCX); rebranded SpaceXAI in July 2026", "founded": 2023, "headquarters": "Palo Alto, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Elon Musk (division president: Michael Nicolls)", "website": "https://x.ai", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/xai.png", "industrySlugs": [ "artificial-intelligence", "ai-compute", "social-media", "defense" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" }, { "slug": "defense", "name": "Defense Tech", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/defense" } ], "parent": { "name": "SpaceX", "companySlug": "spacex", "relationship": "division", "source": "https://www.aol.com/articles/factbox-spacex-acquires-xai-key-142912748.html" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 10, "trackRecord": { "hit": 3, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 3 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/xai", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/xai" }, { "slug": "xiaomi-ev", "name": "Xiaomi EV", "summary": "Xiaomi EV is the automotive division of Xiaomi Corporation (HKEX: 1810), announced in March 2021 with a pledged ~$10B/10-year investment and led personally by founder Lei Jun, who called it his 'last major startup venture.' Its first car, the SU7 sedan, launched March 28, 2024, followed by the YU7 SUV on June 26, 2025 - the YU7 drew roughly 300,000 lock-in orders in 72 hours and was effectively sold out into 2027 at launch. Xiaomi delivered 411,082 vehicles in 2025, beating a raised 350,000 target more than a month early, and the EV/AI segment turned its first full-year operating profit (~RMB900M) as auto revenue topped RMB100B for the first time. Momentum carried into 2026 - cumulative deliveries passed 800,000 on September 7 (about 29 months after the first SU7 handovers) and August marked a fifth straight month above 30,000, though the EV segment swung back to a RMB3.1B operating loss in Q1 2026 (~$5,600 per car) on fewer high-margin SU7 Ultra sales and rising costs. After a September 2025 recall (116,877 units) over driver-assist software and a fatal March 2025 crash, Xiaomi stood up a Safety Advisory Committee in February 2026, retired the original SU7 (~381,000 built) and launched a next-generation SU7 in April 2026 with standard LiDAR, an 800V platform and a mechanical-backup door handle. Cars are built at a two-phase Beijing plant whose combined monthly output has stabilized above 45,000 units (~540k/year run-rate), plus a newer Wuhan plant that entered trial production in May 2026 and is targeting 35,000 units/month by October 2026 as it ramps. Xiaomi has set a 550,000-unit target for 2026, launched the high-performance YU7 GT in May, and on September 7, 2026 officially launched its first EREV SUVs (Sky Nomad N70 Pro, N70 Max, N90 Max and N90 Max Explorer) from 209,900 yuan, taking more than 10,000 locked-in orders in four minutes with deliveries in one to five weeks. At IFA Berlin on September 3, 2026 it signed MoUs with eight German dealer groups - its first European retail partners - ahead of a 2027 Germany-first market entry.", "summarySource": "https://cnevpost.com/2026/09/07/xiaomi-launches-sky-nomad-extended-range-suvs/", "status": "Division of Xiaomi Corporation (HKEX: 1810)", "founded": 2021, "headquarters": "Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Lei Jun (Xiaomi founder, Chairman & CEO)", "website": "https://www.mi.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/xiaomi-ev.png", "industrySlugs": [ "electric-vehicles", "autonomous-vehicles", "semiconductors" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "semiconductors", "name": "Semiconductors", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/semiconductors" } ], "parent": { "name": "Xiaomi Corporation", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "division", "source": "https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/30/chinas-xiaomi-to-launch-electric-car-business-and-invest-10-billion.html" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 3, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 3 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-07", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/xiaomi-ev", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/xiaomi-ev" }, { "slug": "xpeng", "name": "XPeng", "summary": "XPeng is a Guangzhou-based smart-EV maker (founded 2014; NYSE: XPEV / HKEX: 9868) that delivered a record 429,445 vehicles in 2025 (+125.9% YoY) and delivered 39,107 vehicles in August 2026 (+4% YoY, its second-highest month of the year), for 243,111 delivered in the first eight months of 2026. It reached its first-ever quarterly net profit (~$55.5M) in Q4 2025; Q1 2026 slid back to a RMB1.78B net loss on a seasonal delivery dip, and Q2 2026 rebounded to a record 103,295 deliveries with gross margin at 20.7%, though net loss nearly tripled year-over-year to RMB1.34B on heavy AI, robotics and flying-car reinvestment. The Mona series (310,000+ cumulative) and the flagship GX SUV (21,501 cumulative by end-August, 7,338 in the month) are core volume drivers, alongside the new-generation P7, G6, G7, G9, the X9 MPV, the Mona L03, and the G9L five-seat flagship SUV, which opened pre-sales on August 11 and is slated to launch and begin deliveries in September 2026. XPeng designs its own Turing AI chips and VLA 2.0 autonomous-driving foundation model, and Volkswagen is a deep partner on E/E architecture and VLA software licensing. XPeng began employee Robotaxi testing in Guangzhou in July 2026 and in August secured a permit for remote testing without an onboard safety operator on designated city roads. Flying-car unit Aridge (formerly XPeng AeroHT) has raised nearly $1B and, at IFA Berlin on September 3, 2026, said Land Aircraft Carrier mass production starts in H2 2026 (about 5,000 units/year initially, 7,000+ pre-orders) with CAAC approval and customer deliveries expected in 2027. The IRON humanoid robot walked off XPeng's new automated Guangzhou production line on September 8, 2026; mass production is still targeted by late 2026 and a commercial launch in 2027, and reports in early September said the production version will use semi-solid rather than all-solid-state batteries. XPeng held RMB40.48B (~$5.97B) cash as of June 30, 2026, and now operates in 68 countries and regions. On September 11, 2026 the first right-hand-drive G9L SUVs rolled off the Guangzhou line, with the first batch bound for Australia; XPeng said the G9L will enter 64 countries and regions.", "summarySource": "https://cnevpost.com/2026/09/11/xpeng-first-right-hand-drive-g9l-roll-off-line/", "status": "Public (NYSE: XPEV / HKEX: 9868)", "founded": 2014, "headquarters": "Guangzhou, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "He Xiaopeng", "website": "https://www.xpeng.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/xpeng.png", "industrySlugs": [ "electric-vehicles", "autonomous-vehicles", "evtol", "humanoid-robots" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "evtol", "name": "eVTOL", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/evtol" }, { "slug": "humanoid-robots", "name": "Humanoid Robots", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/humanoid-robots" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 7, "trackRecord": { "hit": 0, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/xpeng", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/xpeng" }, { "slug": "zeekr", "name": "Zeekr", "summary": "Zeekr is Geely's premium, technology-led EV brand, founded in March 2021 in Ningbo and led by CEO An Conghui. In December 2025 Geely completed a ~$2.4B take-private, delisting Zeekr from the NYSE (former ticker ZK) and making it a 100%-owned subsidiary of Geely Automobile Holdings; earlier, in February 2025, Zeekr absorbed Lynk & Co (holding 51%) to form Zeekr Technology Group, a two-brand premium group targeting ~1M annual sales. The Zeekr brand delivered 224,133 vehicles in 2025, and momentum kept accelerating in 2026 - a fifth straight monthly record of 36,981 deliveries in August (+109.81% YoY, +3.19% MoM) brought YTD deliveries to 251,188 (+100.40% YoY). The lineup spans a BEV shooting brake (001), a compact SUV (X), sedans (007/007 GT), MPVs (009, Mix), a mid-size SUV (7X) and PHEV flagships (9X, launched September 2025, and 8X, launched April 17, 2026 to 10,000 firm orders within 30 minutes); the 9X and 8X PHEVs were the main drivers of July's record. Zeekr differentiates on in-house tech - its 800V 'Golden Battery' (the world's first mass-produced 800V LFP ultra-fast-charge cell) and a new 900V SiC architecture across refreshed models, plus G-Pilot ADAS - and its international footprint keeps widening: already active in Australia and Mexico since 2024, the 007 GT is now sold across 16 European countries, the 9X made its live-streamed European debut on July 29, 2026 (ahead of its original Q4 2026 target), the 7GT started sales in Israel on September 6, 2026, AutoWallis is set to launch six Zeekr models in Austria and Poland in Q4 2026, and both the 9X and 8X are confirmed for Australia before year-end. Financially, Zeekr turned profitable for the first time in Q4 2025 - after Q3 2025 revenue of RMB31.56B (+9.1% YoY) at a 19.2% gross margin with net loss down ~85% YoY (its last standalone quarterly report before the December 2025 NYSE delisting folded Zeekr's financials into Geely Automobile Holdings), the brand's Q4 turn lifted Geely's FY2025 core net profit margin by roughly 0.8 percentage points as group core net profit rose 36% to RMB14.41B on record revenue of RMB345.23B; Geely's momentum continued through H1 2026, with the Zeekr brand's own revenue more than doubling YoY to over RMB55B on 178,370 deliveries (the 8X and 9X becoming the best-selling China PHEV SUV in the RMB300,000-500,000 segment and the best-selling passenger vehicle above RMB500,000 respectively), while the Geely group posted a first-half-record RMB173.6B revenue (+15% YoY) and RMB9.68B core net profit (+46% YoY).", "summarySource": "https://cnevpost.com/2026/09/01/roundup-aug-2026-deliveries-chinese-automakers/", "status": "Private (wholly-owned Geely subsidiary; delisted from NYSE Dec 2025)", "founded": 2021, "headquarters": "Ningbo, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Gan Jiayue (Chairman & legal representative, Zhejiang Zeekr Intelligent Technology; also CEO of Geely Auto Group)", "website": "https://www.zeekrgroup.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/zeekr.png", "industrySlugs": [ "electric-vehicles", "autonomous-vehicles" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" } ], "parent": { "name": "Geely Automobile Holdings", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "subsidiary", "source": "https://cnevpost.com/2025/12/22/zeekr-completes-merger-with-geely-delists-from-nyse/" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-12", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/zeekr", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/zeekr" }, { "slug": "zhipu-ai", "name": "Zhipu AI (Z.ai)", "summary": "Zhipu AI - branded Z.ai internationally, and renamed Z.AI Co., Ltd. on the Hong Kong exchange in July 2026 - is a Beijing-based frontier AI lab spun out of Tsinghua University's Knowledge Engineering Group in 2019, best known for its open-weight GLM foundation-model family and for becoming the world's first publicly listed LLM company with its January 2026 Hong Kong IPO (HKEX: 2513). Led by CEO Zhang Peng, it ships MIT-licensed frontier models on a rapid cadence - the current flagship GLM-5.3 (August 2026) is an extended post-training pass on the same ~743B-parameter mixture-of-experts base as June's GLM-5.2, leading open-source models on several agentic and coding benchmarks and, on Zhipu's own reporting, edging Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol on a cybersecurity vulnerability-detection test - alongside the Z.ai/ChatGLM assistant, API platforms, the AutoGLM agent line and the ZCode coding harness aimed at Anthropic's Claude Code. Its API business has scaled fast on coding-tool demand: registered MaaS API users neared 7M by mid-August 2026 and annualized recurring revenue reportedly rose from roughly $1B in July to about $1.6B by end of August 2026 on a monthly-annualized basis, though Zhipu has not officially confirmed these figures and its official H1 2026 revenue print (RMB 953.9M, up 400% YoY) missed analyst estimates. Added to the US Entity List in January 2025, Zhipu leans into a sovereign-AI strategy, selling government-grade LLM infrastructure across Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and is pushing for domestic-chip compute self-sufficiency, having powered up a roughly 1-gigawatt Nvidia-free data center and acquired AI heterogeneous-computing software developer XCore Sigma in July 2026. Its stock rose roughly 1,700% in the six months after listing before a sharp, volatile pullback tied to a thin free float, and in July 2026 it raised a further ~$4B placement to fund compute, with an up-to-RMB-15B Shanghai STAR Market listing also in progress.", "summarySource": "https://m.sosovalue.com/tokenbar/post/2094396077048799234", "status": "Public (HKEX: 2513, renamed Z.AI Co., Ltd. from Knowledge Atlas Technology on July 17, 2026; Shanghai STAR Market A-share listing in the tutoring-acceptance stage)", "founded": 2019, "headquarters": "Beijing, China", "country": "CN", "ceo": "Zhang Peng", "website": "https://z.ai", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/zhipu-ai.png", "industrySlugs": [ "artificial-intelligence" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 3, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 2 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/zhipu-ai", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/zhipu-ai" }, { "slug": "zipline", "name": "Zipline", "summary": "Zipline is an American robotics and logistics company operating the world's largest autonomous delivery service. After pioneering national-scale medical drone delivery in Rwanda, the company has grown into a global network that has flown more than 135 million autonomous miles and completed over 2.7 million commercial deliveries (1 million of those in the trailing 12 months alone) across more than 5,000 hospitals and health centers. U.S. consumer and healthcare delivery has become the growth engine: American deliveries now account for more than 70% of Zipline's daily volume worldwide, a reversal for a network historically anchored in African public health, and the company is now completing a delivery roughly every 20 seconds, up from about once a minute in early 2025. In 2025, Zipline commercially launched Platform 2, its quieter home-delivery system, in Pea Ridge, Arkansas and more than 20 Dallas-Fort Worth communities with Walmart and more than a dozen restaurant brands. In early 2026, backed by an $800M Series H round valuing the company at $7.6B, Zipline launched services in Houston and Phoenix and scaled its North Texas network to 16+ brands and public-space delivery points. In mid-2026 it added Austin and Cleveland (the latter via a Cleveland Clinic prescription-delivery partnership that went live August 3, 2026), partnered with food-technology platform Wonder for drone meal delivery launching January 2027, and was selected by BayCare to build Tampa Bay's first medical drone network. On August 17, 2026, Uber announced a strategic investment in and partnership with Zipline to bring drone delivery to Uber Eats nationwide, starting in Dallas and Houston by year-end 2026 and targeting 1 million drone deliveries a day by the end of 2029. Seattle and at least four additional U.S. states are next in the 2026 rollout.", "summarySource": "https://dronexl.co/2026/08/07/cleveland-clinic-zipline-drone-deliveries-live/", "status": "Private", "founded": 2014, "headquarters": "South San Francisco, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Keller Rinaudo Cliffton", "website": "https://www.zipline.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/zipline.png", "industrySlugs": [ "drone-delivery" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "drone-delivery", "name": "Drone Delivery", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/drone-delivery" } ], "parent": null, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 5, "trackRecord": { "hit": 1, "slipped": 0, "missed": 0, "total": 1 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-05", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/zipline", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/zipline" }, { "slug": "zoox", "name": "Zoox", "summary": "Zoox is Amazon's robotaxi company and the first operator in the United States cleared to charge fares in a purpose-built driverless vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals, or mirrors. NHTSA granted it a two-year exemption from portions of eight Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards on July 30, 2026, capped at 2,500 vehicles a year, and Zoox flipped its roughly 65-vehicle Las Vegas fleet to paid service on August 10, 2026 after nearly a year of free public rides. It designs and builds its bidirectional, four-seat, all-electric robotaxi itself at a Hayward, California plant sized for up to 10,000 vehicles a year, still runs free public rides in San Francisco while it waits on California permits, and has test fleets across ten metros. By late August 2026 Zoox had carried nearly 1 million riders and driven more than 3 million autonomous miles across its four active markets (Las Vegas, San Francisco, Austin, Miami combined), with Las Vegas alone accounting for 350,000+ riders and nearly 2 million miles; independent app tracking put Zoox at 25% of US robotaxi monthly active users in June 2026, up from 15% in January, while Waymo's share fell from 79% to 69%. In March 2026 Zoox and Uber announced a strategic partnership to put Zoox robotaxis on the Uber app - first in Las Vegas, planned for summer 2026, then Los Angeles by mid-2027 - Zoox's first third-party ride-hailing distribution deal; as of early August 2026 the Uber integration had not yet gone live, with Zoox continuing to run its own app in parallel. On September 1, 2026 Zoox said it would begin supervised (safety-driver) mapping and testing in Houston and San Diego, bringing its US test-market footprint to twelve metros. The ramp has come with safety scrutiny: a string of software recalls, most recently 105 robotaxis in July 2026 after one drove into a smoke-obscured Las Vegas fire scene, and an August 2026 report of OSHA-logged injuries among Zoox and Waymo safety-test drivers from hard braking and swerving.", "summarySource": "https://www.fox5vegas.com/2026/08/11/zoox-begins-charging-robotaxi-rides-las-vegas-more-autonomous-vehicle-companies-look-move-traditional-driver-moves-out/", "status": "Subsidiary (Amazon)", "founded": 2014, "headquarters": "Foster City, California", "country": "US", "ceo": "Aicha Evans", "website": "https://zoox.com", "logo": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/logos/zoox.png", "industrySlugs": [ "robotaxis", "autonomous-vehicles", "electric-vehicles", "artificial-intelligence" ], "industries": [ { "slug": "robotaxis", "name": "Robotaxis", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/robotaxis" }, { "slug": "autonomous-vehicles", "name": "Autonomous Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/autonomous-vehicles" }, { "slug": "electric-vehicles", "name": "Electric Vehicles", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/electric-vehicles" }, { "slug": "artificial-intelligence", "name": "AI Labs", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/industry/artificial-intelligence" } ], "parent": { "name": "Amazon.com, Inc.", "companySlug": null, "relationship": "subsidiary", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoox_(company)" }, "upcomingMilestoneCount": 6, "trackRecord": { "hit": 2, "slipped": 1, "missed": 0, "total": 3 }, "dataVerifiedAt": "2026-09-08", "url": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/company/zoox", "apiUrl": "https://www.ventureatlas.org/api/company/zoox" } ] }