Factories-as-a-Service Startup Hadrian Launches Additive Manufacturing Division

Equity markets are in the midst of a moment that’s being called “the Great Rotation“, which is essentially the normal sector rotation that happens in any bull market, but framed in an AI context, as everything now must be, forevermore. Market breadth should start to benefit, as the absurd gains that only a handful of corporate megaliths have enjoyed over the last several years begin to spread to the rest of the economy.

The AI twist is that market observers expect the earliest and biggest beneficiaries to be the companies that have the most to bring to the table in terms of building out the physical infrastructure needed to extend the tech boom’s long-term horizon. While it’s not yet a public company, Hadrian, based in LA, was in on this narrative as early as anybody: it started in 2021 with the goal of using AI to bolster the U.S.’s ability to build new manufacturing capacity.

And now, Hadrian has announced that additive manufacturing (AM) will be a concrete component within the company’s ‘Factories-as-a-Service’ repertoire, with the launch of Hadrian Additive. Given Hadrian’s pedigree, as well as where the AM industry has primarily set its sights for near-term growth, Hadrian has made the U.S. defense industrial base a centerpiece of the Hadrian Additive strategy.

One of the earliest moves to support the new division will be Hadrian’s incorporation of AM capabilities into the company’s signature Opus factory platform software, with the company expecting to make the offering available this year. Matthew Parker, an alum of Nikon AM Synergy, will run the division as VP of Additive Manufacturing.

In a press release about Hadrian’s launch of Hadrian Additive, the founder and CEO of Hadrian, Chris Power, said, “America’s defense industrial base needs [AM] that works in real production, not just in prototypes. We’re building this capacity the same way we build our factories — engineered for qualification, throughput, and speed — so critical programs can scale when it matters most.”

Matthew Parker, the VP of AM at Hadrian, said, “[AM] only becomes strategic when it’s industrialized. Hadrian Additive is designed as a production system from day one, integrated with our factory stack and capable of scaling as demand grows.”

Hadrian had a big Series C raise last year — $260 million — which largely went towards the company’s construction of a nearly 300,000-square-foot production facility in Arizona, at the time that the Series C news hit, Hadrian also announced that it would be launching Hadrian Maritime, “the first in a series of new dedicated divisions” that, in addition to Hadrian Additive, will also include applications like drones.

While I think that the AM industry is leaning a bit too heavily into defense, I also feel like that says more about the conventional macro investment cycle undergirding capitalism than it does about the AM industry. And given that the AM industry has leaned so heavily in this direction, the fact that a company like Hadrian is prioritizing AM in its expansion plans is exactly the type of development the industry needs to confirm that its bets have been wisely placed. It would be rather invalidating for the consensus surrounding AM’s most immediate value proposition if AM weren’t a part of Hadrian’s plans.

Going back to the mention of the Great Rotation, Hadrian’s attention to AM is also clearly a validation of the idea that there is inherent synergy between AI and AM. In an environment in which investors can’t seem to shake the idea that the AI boom has become oversaturated with dumb money, digital manufacturing is arguably one of the least dumb application categories for AI.

Thus, Hadrian fits the exact profile of the sort of company that actually has a realistic chance of mainstreaming AM within the world of manufacturing, by speeding up AM’s path towards establishing a broader physical footprint. As I wrote recently about Roboze’s opening of an aerospace and defense headquarters in El Segundo, that physical footprint is what manufacturing enterprises need to thrive.

Images courtesy of Hadrian