September 2026 Edition

Last month I wrote that procurement was moving faster than the authorities underneath it, and that it was worth watching which one gave first. September answered that quickly.

The House passed a continuing resolution on September 1 and the President signed it the next day, funding the government through December 11 at last year's levels. That removed the shutdown risk and installed the freeze. By mid-month Anduril was saying publicly that it cannot begin production work on Fury until full-year appropriations pass, in the same month Air Force operators started flying Fury on their own at Creech.

Private capital didn’t wait for Congress. Stoke closed $1 billion. Impulse added $308 million. Antares signed a fuel contract with prepayments to help build the enrichment capacity it will need. The demand signal is set. The public money behind it is on hold until at least December.

More on the thesis over at Investing in Organized Chaos.

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

Portfolio Spotlight

Arbor Energy

Arbor continues executing toward its first commercial HALCYON unit in 2028. Brad joined the Open Circuit podcast this month to make the case that AI needs a different kind of power plant. The argument gets easier every month the interconnection queue gets longer.

Icarus

When the Army launched xTech|Search 10 in early September, it held up Icarus as the example of what the competition is for, noting that the company used its xTech|Search 9 follow-on SBIR award to expand into live Soldier exercises, including Valiant Shield in June. It is not every day the Army names a startup as the proof point in its own competition launch.

Volund Manufacturing

Volund closed out SoCal Deep Tech Week, hosting the final reception at its Huntington Beach facility on September 17th. This year’s edition ran under the banner of scaling American manufacturing, bringing roughly 450 founders, investors, and operators to Long Beach for three summits and the inaugural Industrial Base Challenge. When a week about rebuilding the industrial base ends on a factory floor that builds turbojets, it is the right place to end it.

Investment Opportunities & Updates

Antares Nuclear

Two months after Fort Bragg, Antares added space and fuel. On September 11 the company announced its selection for a $161 million Strategic Breakthrough award from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration. The scope covers a nuclear ground demonstration of the R1-S space reactor, integration with a spacecraft toward flight certification, and a separate Mark-1 application powering an operational ground-to-space asset, with testing scheduled for 2027. Six days later Antares and Centrus signed a definitive multi-year contract for high-assay low-enriched uranium, with deliveries before the end of the decade and Antares prepayments funding Centrus's capacity expansion in Piketon, Ohio. It is Antares' second HALEU supply agreement this year, after one with Urenco. A reactor company that prepays for enrichment capacity is planning for production, not demonstration.

Anduril Industries

On September 24 the Chief of Staff of the Air Force welcomed Fury and General Atomics' Vengeance to the Experimental Operations Unit at Creech Air Force Base, where Air Force operators are now flying Fury on their own. Anduril was the first of the two to deliver, in August. At the Air and Space Forces Association conference in mid-September, Anduril's Erin Simpson said the company cannot begin work on its FQ-44 production contract until Congress passes FY2027 appropriations. Arsenal-1 can build up to 150 Fury a year, but current Air Force orders do not yet reach that level, and the plant is building YFQ-44 prototypes in the meantime. The campus is still widening its scope: on September 18 the Columbus Dispatch reported that Altius 600 production will expand from Atlanta to Arsenal-1.

Chaos Inc.

Chaos cut the ribbon on a new 100,000-square-foot global headquarters in El Segundo's Smoky Hollow district on September 22, built out with 400 workstations and room for more than 450 employees. For a company that announced its second acquisition in July, the floor plan says where management expects headcount to go.

Critical Loop

Critical Loop shared a customer case this month that captures the whole problem in two numbers: two California industrial sites needed 20 MW, and the utility could commit 7. The company closed the gap with shift-based load management, on-site batteries, and its Cygnus power-control system, rather than waiting in a queue it says is running three to five years in California. Energize Capital also named Critical Loop a Top 30 Digital Innovator in its Electrify Everything 2026 list.

Dominion Dynamics

On September 10 Dominion qualified as a supplier in four streams of Canada's Defence Drone Initiative marketplace, spanning command and control, integration and engineering, test and evaluation, and experimentation. Qualification is eligibility to bid rather than an order, but it puts Dominion on the list Canada can buy from. Two weeks later the team flew into the Yukon to deliver product directly to a customer. The DEPLOY summit follows on November 5 in Ottawa.

Gitai 

Gitai spent September showing its work on the Space-Based Interceptor program in a run of company videos: hot fires of its in-house throttling divert and attitude control system, solid rocket motors approaching full scale, and, by the company's count, 21 hot fires in August alone at its own test site. A space robotics company building its own propulsion for missile defense is the kind of vertical integration Golden Dome's schedule rewards.

Hemispheric AI

No public developments this month. In an August interview with the Times of Israel, the company said it intends to submit its first PTSD application to the FDA in early 2027, with a product rollout hoped for later that year.

Impulse Space 

On September 22 Impulse announced a $28 million Space Force contract for a new space-domain-awareness mission. A Mira vehicle will host a government-furnished MIT Lincoln Laboratory optical sensor in low Earth orbit to track and characterize objects in geostationary orbit, supported by a $19.75 million FY2026 APFIT award sponsored by U.S. Space Command. This is a separate award from last month's $28 million VICTUS SALO extension. Six days earlier Impulse announced a $308 million Series D extension, bringing the round to $808 million. Helios' first launch is planned for 2027.

Stoke Space

Stoke announced the initial closing of a $1 billion Series E on September 8, co-led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital, bringing total capital raised to $2.3 billion. It also revealed Nova Block 2, a 14-engine, fully reusable vehicle designed for 15 metric tons to low Earth orbit, targeting first flight in 2029. The first Nova Pathfinder flight is now targeted for the first part of 2027 from Cape Canaveral, a change from the late-2026 target we reported last month. On September 22 Stoke named its first payloads, from AstroForge and Celestis.

Market Insights

The CR arrived, and the freeze came with it.

The House passed the Senate's continuing resolution 370 to 48 on September 1, and the President signed it September 2. It funds the government through December 11 at FY2026 levels and restricts new program starts, which settles the shutdown question and opens a different one. The House Appropriations Committee approved its defense bill, H.R. 9495, on June 24, but no full-year defense appropriation has been enacted, and the next deadline of December 12 now falls after the midterms. Fury is the clearest case: in operators' hands at Creech, and unable to enter its production contract until the money follows. In late August, Gen. Michael Guetlein said roughly 90% of Golden Dome's initial $22.5 billion was already obligated, and warned that without funding beyond FY2026 the program stops at what has been built.

The tanker war resumed.

On August 30 U.S. forces struck rocket launchers on Iran's Larak Island after CENTCOM said Iranian forces were preparing to fire rockets carrying sea mines into the strait. On September 1 CENTCOM began striking IRGC targets inside Iran following attempted attacks on commercial shipping and U.S. personnel, and Tehran answered with missiles. On September 5 CENTCOM said the IRGC launched ballistic missiles toward a U.S. aircraft carrier and destroyer, both of which evaded; U.S. forces then disabled two IRGC crude carriers and destroyed a third in the Gulf of Oman. On September 8 CENTCOM destroyed five more Iranian crude carriers after the IRGC targeted a U.S. warship twice in two days, reporting no American personnel harmed in either tanker exchange. On September 16 CENTCOM said the strait remains open for transit. Late in the month the IRGC claimed to have seized a second American underwater drone, which CENTCOM dismissed. As last month, this is a readiness story and we describe it as one.

Space weapons acknowledged.

On September 14 at the Air and Space Forces Association conference, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force. The Air Force's own account called it the first acknowledgment that Space Force has deployed weapons in space. Meink declined to elaborate on what they are.

The microreactor path now runs through fuel.

The timeline has compressed quickly. Executive Order 14299, signed May 23, 2025, required an Army-regulated reactor operating on a domestic installation by September 30, 2028. The Army announced Janus on October 14, 2025. The first reactor in DOE's pilot program reached criticality on June 4, 2026 at Antares, and the fifth followed on August 5 at Oklo's Groves test reactor. On August 25, Janus assigned five vendors to five installations. What stands between here and 2028 is less about physics than supply chain, and fuel sits at the top of that list. Centrus describes its Piketon plant as the only licensed HALEU production facility in the western world, which is why developers, Antares among them, are placing binding orders rather than waiting for capacity to appear.

Until Next Time

Two editions ago the lesson was that you cannot surge what you have not built. Last month the buying started. This month the authority to keep buying was paused until December, and it showed up first as a production contract Anduril cannot yet start.

What did not pause was private capital. Launch, in-space mobility, and nuclear fuel all drew commitments in September sized for production rather than prototypes. That is a bet that the appropriation eventually arrives, and it is the same bet this portfolio was built on. The companies that can keep executing on private money through a frozen quarter will come out of December further ahead than the ones waiting on a program start.

Thank you for reading.

If you're in LA, reach out. Always happy to connect.

Regards,
Jordan Yashari
Founder & General Partner
Cyrus Ventures