December 2025 Edition

Happy Holidays from Cyrus Ventures

As we close out 2025, this edition of Radar reflects on a year that validated our core thesis: infrastructure determines destiny. The convergence of AI compute demands, defense production needs, and energy grid requirements isn't theoretical, it's now driving record capital flows across every sector we touch.

December Highlights:

• Antares Nuclear closed a $96M Series B to accelerate its microreactor demonstration timeline

• Anduril secured a prime position on the $151B Golden Dome SHIELD contract vehicle

• Icarus won the YC Fall 2025 Product Showcase and confirmed seven-figure government revenue

• Impulse Space executed a successful autonomous rendezvous mission, validating critical orbital logistics capabilities

2025 Year in Review: The numbers tell the story. U.S. defense tech funding hit $19 billion, nearly doubling 2024. Hyperscaler infrastructure spending surged to $405 billion. Golden Dome alone allocated $25 billion, clearing over 1,000 vendors for a $151 billion contract pool. Our portfolio companies publicly raised hundreds of millions of dollars, won contracts across every service branch, and moved from concept to hardware.

Infrastructure is no longer a supporting player. It's the main event.

Portfolio Spotlight

Cyrus is proud to support transformative companies building the physical backbone of American dominance:

Arbor Energy

Fuel-flexible supercritical CO₂ turbine technology

The 1MW ATLAS pilot system at Arbor's El Segundo headquarters is in final commissioning stages, with the team executing pre-ignition protocols ahead of first fire. The $55M Series A closed in October continues to fund both the pilot completion and development of HALCYON, the 25MW commercial system designed for hyperscaler deployment.

Arbor's $41M carbon removal offtake agreement with Frontier (backed by Alphabet, Meta, and Stripe) remains the anchor for commercial deployment, positioning the company at the intersection of AI energy demand and decarbonization.

2025 Milestones: $55M Series A (Oct) • $41M Frontier offtake (Q3) • ATLAS pilot construction completed (Nov) • HALCYON development accelerated

Icarus

 Solar-powered stratospheric drones

December was a breakout month for Icarus. At Y Combinator's Fall 2025 Demo Day on December 2, the company won the F25 Group 1 Product Showcase, a significant validation of both the technology and Henry's vision for "cell towers in the sky."

During the presentation, leadership confirmed Icarus is already generating seven figures in revenue from U.S. government contracts, a remarkable milestone for a company positioning a six-figure drone as a persistent, low-cost alternative to satellites costing millions.

The investor roster now includes Taro Fukuyama and Pioneer Fund, both of whom have publicly endorsed the strategic value of stratospheric connectivity for defense infrastructure.

2025 Milestones: Pre-Seed Extension closed (Apr) • Army flight demonstrations (Aug) • YC Fall 2025 batch • Demo Day winner (Dec) • 7-figure government revenue confirmed

Volund Manufacturing

Attritable gas turbine manufacturing

Volund continues to operationalize its Redondo Beach facility, running qualification batches for prospective defense prime contractors. The company's automated production line is purpose-built to address the 7,000-unit turbojet deficit in the U.S. defense industrial base, a gap that becomes more acute as attritable systems move from concept to doctrine.

No new contracts were publicly announced in December, but the company is on track to close on several LOIs and similar opportunities early into Q1 2026. The strategic positioning remains strong as DOD invests billions in drone manufacturing capacity with a goal of producing one million units by 2027.

2025 Milestones: Cyrus investment closed (Jul) • Redondo Beach facility online (Sep) • Demo engine testing with primes (Q4)

Investment Opportunities & Updates

Our SPV positions demonstrated significant momentum this year:

Anduril Industries

Autonomous defense systems

Anduril closed 2025 with a landmark win: selection as a prime contractor on the $151 billion SHIELD IDIQ contract vehicle for Golden Dome, the administration's layered missile defense architecture. The company also received a ~$10 million prototype contract from U.S. Space Force to develop boost-phase space-based interceptors—competing directly against Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

This caps a year that saw Anduril double its valuation to $30.5B, break ground on the 5-million-square-foot Arsenal-1 factory in Ohio, and win over $900 million in new contracts including the $642M Marine Corps counter-drone award and $99.6M Army NGC2 prototype.

Antares Nuclear 

Microreactors for defense and space

Antares closed a $96 million Series B on December 3, led by Shine Capital with participation from Caffeinated Capital and Alt Capital. The funding accelerates construction of the Mark-0 demonstration reactor at Idaho National Laboratory, targeting criticality before July 4, 2026.

The company maintains active development contracts with U.S. Air Force, Space Force, DIU, and NASA (for lunar surface power concepts). The December 2 NRC approval of TerraPower's Kemmerer project signals a more favorable regulatory environment for advanced reactor companies—a tailwind for Antares as it approaches its critical demonstration milestone.

Chaos Inc.

Distributed radar systems

Fresh off its $510 million raise in November, Chaos secured selection for the U.S. Army's G-TEAD Marketplace on December 16. This designation enables rapid procurement of VANQUISH distributed radar systems by Army Service Component Commands and NATO allies.

The selection follows successful participation in Project Flytrap 4.5 in Germany (November-December), where Chaos demonstrated its Coherent Distributed Network (CDN) technology in a live, contested electronic warfare environment against NATO partners.

Hemispheric AI

Non-invasive brain-computer interface

CEO Hagai Lalazar was featured in Forbes on December 7, detailing Hemispheric's "decoding-first" approach to brain-computer interfaces. The strategy differentiates the company from invasive competitors by focusing on advanced signal processing of non-invasive data rather than surgical implants.

The company remains in stealth regarding specific defense partnerships and FDA regulatory timelines, with plans to emerge publicly in 2026.

Impulse Space

In-space transportation

On December 15, Impulse Space executed a successful Autonomous Rendezvous and Proximity Operation (RPO) during the LEO Express-2 mission. The Mira orbital transfer vehicle maneuvered to within 1.2 kilometers of a target object using software from partner Starfish Space.

This capability—high-thrust autonomous maneuvering—is foundational for the company's lunar cargo architecture targeting 3-ton payload delivery by 2028, as well as future inspection and servicing missions.

Stoke Space

Reusable rockets

Construction at Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 14 remains on schedule for early 2026 activation. The team is deploying Series D capital to finalize first-stage reuse hardware for the Nova rocket, which will be fully reusable from day one.

Stoke's Spring 2025 selection for NSSL Phase 3 makes the company eligible to compete for up to $5.6 billion in national security launch contracts—a significant validation of the technology roadmap.

Team & Strategy

The Value Beyond Capital

2025 reinforced what we've always believed: in defense tech and energy infrastructure, relationships compound faster than returns.

This year, our venture partners, Andrew Shapiro, Neil Mason, Meharban Sobti, and Bob Urberger, provided technical diligence that prevented costly missteps and identified opportunities others missed to our entire portfolio.

The fund's positioning at the intersection of AI compute, defense production, and energy infrastructure isn't just a thesis, it's a network effect. Every portfolio company strengthens connections to the others. Every LP relationship opens doors that benefit the entire ecosystem.

As we enter 2026, that network continues to expand.

Market Insights

We’ve been saying infrastructure determine destiny. Here's how 2025 proved it.

Defense Tech: From Niche to National Priority

U.S. defense tech startups closed 2025 with $19 billion in funding, a figure that seemed improbable even two years ago when the sector raised just $5 billion. The growth wasn't linear; it was exponential, with 2024's $10 billion serving as the inflection point. AI/ML applications captured 60% of capital as autonomous systems moved from prototypes to production contracts. Counter-drone, space defense, and hypersonics rounded out the surge.

The largest rounds tell the story: Anduril ($2.5B), Saronic ($600M), Chaos Industries ($510M). These aren't seed bets, they're growth rounds backing companies with revenue, contracts, and production capacity.

Energy Infrastructure: The Hidden Bottleneck

Hyperscaler capital expenditure exceeded $405 billion in 2025, with Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Oracle all racing to secure reliable power for AI compute. Nuclear commitments alone topped $50 billion as data center demand projections for 2026 reached 500-600 TWh globally.

Yet the grid can't keep pace. U.S. utilities invested $208 billion in infrastructure, but over 10,300 projects remain stuck in interconnection queues, a 5-7 year backlog representing 2.6 terawatts of stranded capacity. This bottleneck creates asymmetric opportunity for companies that can deliver power outside traditional grid constraints.

Golden Dome: Defense Meets Infrastructure

The administration's layered missile defense initiative allocated $25 billion in 2025, culminating in December's clearance of 1,014 vendors for a $151 billion contract pool. Space-based sensors and interceptors are now the priority, with contracts flowing to both legacy primes and insurgent defense tech companies. The program exemplifies the convergence we've been tracking: advanced manufacturing, AI-enabled systems, and energy-intensive production capacity all intersecting at scale.

The Correlation That Matters

Underlying all of this is a pattern as old as industrialization: energy abundance enables national wealth. The R-squared correlation between energy consumption per capita and GDP per capita remains approximately 0.8 globally, meaning energy access explains 80% of the variance in economic output.

Countries that invested in energy infrastructure over the past two decades (South Korea, China, Norway) saw GDP growth follow. Those that underinvested stagnated. The same logic now applies to AI infrastructure, defense production, and grid capacity. The nations and companies that build will lead; those that don't will depend on those who do.

Data: World Bank (GDP, 2024), IEA/Our World in Data (energy, 2024). Outliers exist—Singapore achieves high GDP with moderate energy through service-economy efficiency; Saudi Arabia shows high consumption with mid-tier GDP due to subsidies—but the pattern holds.

Until Next Time

2025 was a year of validation. The thesis held. The portfolio delivered. The convergence we anticipated—AI compute, defense production, energy infrastructure—is now consensus.

But consensus creates competition. The question for 2026 isn't whether these sectors will grow; it's who will capture the value. We believe the answer lies in relationships, speed, and positioning at critical nodes in the infrastructure stack.

Cyrus enters the new year with a strong portfolio, an expanding network, and a pipeline of opportunities that reflect everything we've learned. We're grateful for your partnership and excited for what's ahead.

Wishing you and yours a peaceful holiday season and a prosperous 2026.

Regards,
Jordan Yashari
Founder & General Partner
Cyrus Ventures