August 2025 Edition

Welcome to the August edition of Cyrus Ventures Radar. This month we celebrate Arbor Energy's landmark term sheet, validation that our portfolio is solving the AI infrastructure crisis. Our newest addition, Volund Manufacturing, is already testing attritable gas turbine capabilities with prospective customers, and Icarus' successful Army demonstration has opened the doors in both defense and telecom sectors. Our thesis has never been more relevant as the Pentagon awards its first $800M contracts directly to consumer AI companies.

Portfolio Spotlight

Cyrus is proud to support innovative companies in defense tech and energy:

• Arbor Energy: Signed a multi-year power purchase term sheet, a remarkable achievement for clean gas turbine technology. With incumbents like GE, Siemens, and Mitsubishi facing 5+ year backlogs, Arbor is fielding inquiries from energy industry giants seeking gas-agnostic solutions. The company remains on track for a transformative public announcement by year end.

• Icarus: Following their successful Army demonstration in August, CEO Henry has been shuttling between El Segundo and DC, meeting with representatives to expand applications of their stratospheric technology. The company additionally partnered with HII, fully integrating HII’s sensors with their Apollo platform to bring deep sensing to the stratosphere.

  

  Icarus x HII Collaborative Meetup

• Volund Manufacturing: Our investment has closed as the company accelerates deployment of its proprietary manufacturing automation. They're actively testing their attritable gas turbines with potential customers while expanding their facility with new hardware. As defense production struggles to meet demand, and critical components constraining everything from missiles to turbines, Volund's order-of-magnitude cost reductions become increasingly strategic.

Investment Opportunities & Updates

We’ve secured strategic access to several transformative opportunities while our existing investments continue their momentum:

New Strategic Positions:

• We’re participating in rounds for Antares Nuclear and potentially Stoke Space, positioning ahead of the nuclear renaissance and space logistics revolution

• Arbor Energy follow-on allocation secured as investor demand surges following their hyperscaler agreement

• Strategic access secured to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Apptronik, representing the AI and robotics platforms reshaping every industry

Recent Investment Traction:

• Anduril Industries: Anduril opened their Mississippi solid rocket motor factory, breaking a 50-year duopoly with 6K motors/year in capacity estimated by 2026. They additionally established offices in Taiwan and Seoul as they continue to expand internationally. Separately, the company recently announced that they will be a sponsor to the Nascar Cup Series.

• Chaos Inc.: The company remains deployed in the middle east as they continue deepening their customer relationships in discretion due to security constraints.

• Impulse Space: Impulse unveiled their upgraded Mira vehicle which boasts a 25% improvement in delta-v (improved maneuverability). They were additionally awarded dual Orbital Transfer studies by NASA and fully booked out their rideshare capacity for Q3 2026.

• Stoke Space: The company announced their 2x revenue growth in the first half of 2025. Their Cape Canaveral site has shown rapid progress with its structural framework, and their Nova rocket remains on track for early 2026 operations.

Team & Strategy

The Cyrus advisory team's collective experience continues to prove invaluable in after Volund's technology and confirming acute production capacity needs across defense sectors. This same expertise helps us navigate the converging AI-energy crisis where every hyperscaler needs power solutions yesterday.

I'll be attending SoCal Deep Tech Week events in September and the Payload Space Conference in November, continuing to build the relationships that give our portfolio companies unfair advantages.

Market Insights

The technology-defense landscape shifted fundamentally this summer with developments that validate our investment thesis:

• Pentagon Embraces Silicon Valley AI: The Chief Digital and AI Office awarded unprecedented $200M contracts each to Google, xAI, Anthropic, and OpenAI—the first time the military has contracted directly with consumer AI companies at this scale. These deals focus on agentic AI workflows and LLMs for intelligence and warfighting, signaling a permanent shift from traditional defense contractors.

• Grid Infrastructure at Breaking Point: Virginia's "Data Center Alley" faces 7-year interconnection timelines with the PJM queue (renewable energy projects backlog) containing 202 GW of stalled renewable projects. Nine governors demand reforms as the 2,600 GW national queue, double America's entire installed capacity, threatens to strangle both AI and reindustrialization ambitions.

• Supply Chain Vulnerabilities Exposed: The Pentagon identified 200,000+ defense suppliers with limited visibility into foreign dependencies. America had zero TNT production until recently and produces only 18,000 propellant charges monthly versus 40,000 shells, revealing decades of industrial atrophy that funding alone cannot quickly reverse.

• Humanoid Robotics Reaches Escape Velocity: Figure AI's $39.5B valuation, up 15x from 2024, signals commercial viability as production costs dropped 40% to $30-150k per unit. With Tesla targeting 1 million units annually and Apptronik's $350M round validating multi-vendor markets, Goldman Sachs revised projections to $38B by 2035, 6x their previous estimate.

Until Next Time

The AI revolution's dirty secret is infrastructure, you can't run GPT-5 without gigawatts, can't deploy robots without manufacturing, and can't defend assets without production capacity. This is precisely why we invested in Arbor's power generation, Volund's manufacturing automation, and Icarus' dual-use platforms. Others may chase AI application layer valuations, but they’re building the picks and shovels for the next American empire.

As Figure's valuation proves, markets are pricing in transformation, not iteration. Our fund structure allows us to move decisively when these inflection points emerge, bringing both capital and strategic value to accelerate our portfolio's growth.

If you're planning to visit Los Angeles this fall, I’d love to meet and discuss all things Energy, Defense, Infrastructure and AI. The best deals still come from relationships built on trust, and there's no substitute for meeting face-to-face.

Regards,
Jordan Yashari
Founder & General Partner
Cyrus Ventures