Hypersonic aircraft company moves headquarters from Atlanta to El Segundo
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Aerospace startup Hermeus is moving its headquarters to El Segundo from Atlanta as it aims to build autonomous hypersonic aircraft for the military, the latest sign of revival in the region’s aerospace and defense sectors.The company, valued at $1 billion, is opening executive offices and a facility where it will design and build its next prototype, a supersonic plane intended to hit Mach 3 — faster than any modern warplane.Business Aerospace companies are sprouting all across Southern California, breathing new life into an industry that once powered the regional economy.The company’s goal is to eventually develop a hypersonic plane reaching Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, and Southern California has the engineering talent base to help achieve that, executives said.“Building a lot of aircraft developmentally very quickly, doing iterative developments, it really doesn’t exist anywhere out in the world other than SpaceX — and we’ve recruited a lot of talent from there over the years,” said co-founder and Chief Executive AJ Piplica, a Georgia Tech alumnus.“We’re now at a point in the company’s trajectory where we are scaling what the team can do,” he added.
Business Elon Musk founded SpaceX in El Segundo 24 years ago and later moved its operations to Hawthorne, where the company still maintains a large campus despite relocating its headquarters to Texas in 2024.El Segundo and other South Bay cities have witnessed explosive growth in recent years, with scores of startups in aerospace and defense tech — many founded by former SpaceX employees.Hermeus announced its move Tuesday at the same time it disclosed its latest $350-million funding round, which it said values the company at $1 billion.
The round was led Khosla Ventures, founded by prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.Other participants included billionaire Peter Thiel‘s...