Castelion
Castelion builds low-cost, mass-producible hypersonic strike missiles engineered for industrial-rate output, targeting U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Army requirements.
Background
Castelion was founded in 2022 in Southern California by three former SpaceX engineers: Bryon Hargis (CEO), Sean Pitt (COO), and Andrew Kreitz (CFO).
The trio applied SpaceX-style iterative development and manufacturing philosophy to hypersonic weapons, a domain previously dominated by cost-plus primes with decade-long timelines.
The company's flagship system is Blackbeard, billed as the first U.S. hypersonic weapon explicitly designed for commercial unit cost and continuous flight-test iteration rather than one-off demonstration.
A ground-launch variant, Blackbeard GL, is under development for the U.S. Army's Project HX3. The broader product thesis centers on industrial-rate output — producing hypersonic strike missiles at volumes and price points legacy primes have not demonstrated.
Castelion sells directly to U.S. military services through government contracts and AFRL/NAVAIR grant mechanisms. Headcount was reported at 80–100 employees in early 2025, with LinkedIn estimates placing the team in the 51–200 band as of mid-2026.
Linked records
Wired to the rest of BattlePolicy — the systems it builds in the Lexicon and the contracts it wins in the Procurement Tracker. Every link below is a record in our own datasets.
- none linked yet
Financial footing Pro
- $350M Series B (Dec 2025; valuation unconfirmed — "$2.8B" was unsourced)
- Navy Blackbeard ~$49.9M (Feb 2026) + $105M F/A-18 integration (Apr 2026)
- Backers: Lightspeed, Andreessen Horowitz
Castelion raised an undisclosed Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from a16z, Lavrock Ventures, Cantos, First In, BlueYard Capital, and Interlagos. In January 2025 the company announced $100 million in combined debt and equity, including $30 million in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank. A $350 million Series B followed in December 2025, with Pritzker Group among reported participants, pushing the post-round valuation to approximately $2.8 billion per Caplight private-market data.
Total capital raised aggregates to roughly $494 million across all rounds. No revenue figures or contract backlog totals have been publicly disclosed. Castelion remains privately held with no announced IPO plans. Andreessen Horowitz and Altimeter Capital are cited in market profiles as investors, though round-level attribution for both is not fully confirmed in public filings.
Major customers & contracts Pro
Joined live from the Procurement & Contracts Tracker — real award/announcement records.
| Customer | System | Scale / detail | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Blackbeard hypersonic (first Navy production order, Castelion) | 50 early operational capability pre-production prototypes and 50 storage and shipping containers | signed |
Further disclosed customers & programs (public reporting):
The U.S. Navy awarded Castelion approximately $49.9 million under the Blackbeard program via Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), reported February 2026. A follow-on $105 million contract for F/A-18 integration was reported in April 2026. The U.S. Army's FY2026 budget request included $25 million under Project HX3 to support Blackbeard GL development. The Air Force Research Laboratory has provided grants supporting Castelion's hypersonic development work.
Castelion is also described in private-market profiles as holding contracts with the U.S. Air Force, though specific program names and award values for Air Force work have not been publicly confirmed. All confirmed customers are U.S. military services; no allied Ministry of Defence contracts or foreign military sales have been publicly disclosed as of mid-2026.
Leadership & contact surface Pro
Leadership: Bryon Hargis
Official site: https://www.castelion.com
Competitive position Pro
Against Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — the incumbent hypersonic primes behind LRHW and HAWC — Castelion's edge is unit-cost discipline and iteration speed; its weakness is the absence of a fielded system and the institutional relationships primes leverage for large program-of-record awards. Against Anduril, which competes across autonomous systems and strike with significant DoD backing, Castelion is more narrowly focused on hypersonic propulsion and airframe; Anduril has a broader customer base and larger headcount but has not fielded a hypersonic system.
Against Hermeus, which targets hypersonic aircraft rather than strike missiles, Castelion operates in a more directly weaponized market with earlier military contract traction. Against Northrop Grumman's hypersonic programs, Castelion lacks manufacturing scale but moves faster through flight-test cycles. The market structure remains early-stage: DoD is deliberately seeding multiple vendors to break prime dependency, which benefits Castelion in the near term but creates a crowded field once programs of record consolidate.
Battlefield relevance Pro
No confirmed combat use to date.
Analyst verdict Pro
Castelion's strategic trajectory hinges on converting early NAVAIR and Army development contracts into a program-of-record award before DoD consolidates hypersonic buys around one or two vendors. The $494 million raised and $2.8 billion valuation reflect investor confidence in the SpaceX-alumni team and the Pentagon's stated urgency around hypersonic capacity, but neither translates automatically to a production contract. The single biggest risk is the valley of death between funded development and an awarded, high-volume production deal — a transition that has killed well-funded defense startups before.
The competitive moat, if it exists, is manufacturing cost architecture rather than unique physics; that moat requires proving out at scale. Three things to watch over the next 12–18 months: whether Blackbeard completes a publicly acknowledged flight test, whether the Army's Project HX3 advances to a competitive down-select naming Castelion, and whether a third funding round or strategic partnership signals a path to production-rate capital.
Sources & verification Pro
- https://labusinessjournal.com/la500-2026/technology-2026/la500-2026-andrew-kreitz/
- https://techfundingnews.com/hypersonic-missile-startup-funding-castelion/
- https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250129937934/en/Castelion-Announces-100M-Financing
- https://www.caplight.com/company/castelion
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/space-insider_castelion-a-defense-manufacturer-based-in-activity-7290790898051801089-4_jT
- https://www.cbinsights.com/company/pallas-industries
- https://www.castelion.com/news/series-b/
- https://www.builtinla.com/articles/castelion-raises-350m-series-b-20251208
- https://startupintros.com/orgs/castelion
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/castelion
- https://www.nasdaqprivatemarket.com/company/castelion/
- https://www.facebook.com/forbes/posts/three-year-old-castelion-is-worth-28-billion-after-raising-350-million-to-fund-i/1250713213585333/
- https://equityzen.com/company/pallas4707/
- https://www.castelion.com
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaXzkKRJOLI