An Unfair Advantage for Freedom

A defense startup can build a great product and still fail when a government buyer asks for 50,000 units.

If delivery takes five years, the buyer goes back to a Big Five prime contractor and buys their product instead. Likely not as suited to task, and definitely more expensive.

Three bottlenecks separate a prototype from a defense program: reaching the people who buy, producing at the volume they require, and navigating the regulations that govern military procurement. Solving just one of these bottlenecks can take years. Heaviside was built from the start to win at all three of them.

Heaviside Industries (opens in new tab) builds autonomous munitions platforms for U.S. and allied forces across air, land, and sea. Felicis is proud to lead their Series B (opens in new tab). In addition to the new financing, Heaviside is announcing a strategic partnership with Nammo (opens in new tab), the Norway-based aerospace and defense group.

Solving for scale from the start

Phillip Walker, Heaviside (opens in new tab)'s founder and CEO, has spent years selling custom systems to U.S. government customers. He understands who makes a buying decision, how procurement cycles move, and what has to happen long before a contract is signed.

The Nammo partnership addresses supply chain, production and regulation. Under the agreement, Nammo will supply payloads for Heaviside's precision munitions platforms. The partnership also gives Heaviside access to established production and testing infrastructure.

That foundation matters because demand alone does not build a defense company. A program can require tens of thousands of units, and a platform cannot ship until the product, supply chain, and manufacturer all clear a demanding regulatory process. Most young defense companies only start to think about how to solve those problems after demand arrives. Heaviside started from day one.

This team has done the work before

While touring the facility, Jake noticed what looked like a pool. In fact it was a sophisticated testing tank for underwater equipment. Inside the warehouse, the space is stacked floor to ceiling with gear and products undergoing testing and development. There is a closet full of every energy drink you can imagine and open cans on every desk.

In the time we spent there, the team was constantly iterating with a clear sense of trust in their own processes, allowing them to move quickly and with confidence. The team’s intensity is a direct result of their lived experience.

Heaviside has brought together senior engineers and operators from some of the most successful defense companies over the last 40 years. They know how to build for the field, manufacture physical systems, and work within the constraints of defense procurement.

We always make our own independent assessment of a founder through a process that involves spending hundreds of hours together. In defense, where relationships take years to build and reputation follows you, hearing from people who have watched someone work over a long stretch matters. Phil’s references were consistently strong: he knew the customer, knew the process, and knew how to assemble people capable of delivering.

Phil has also drawn in a group of incredible people as investors and advisors, like Frank Finelli, formerly a partner and managing director at The Carlyle Group, and Paul Dimitruk, co-founder and vice chairman of Partners Capital, who both backed the Series A. Phil is a founder who will do anything and bring in anyone that he believes will increase Heaviside’s rate of growth and success.

Miniaturization and beyond

Heaviside’s product strategy is simple: Build small, affordable, reliable systems to tilt the playing field for forces defending freedom. The engineering challenge common to all their endeavors is miniaturization: Radios, optics, guidance, and compute all have to fit into small systems and keep working in adversarial environments. The team has spent years building under those constraints and, we believe, are world leaders in this crucial capability.

Meanwhile, Heaviside's relationships create buyer access for sales while Nammo adds the production and testing base required to deliver.

This new financing will fund production capacity, hiring, existing customer commitments, and a larger U.S. operational footprint, beyond Los Angeles and Oslo.

The real test of a defense company comes when procurement needs tens of thousands of units. Heaviside is building the capacity to deliver on the timelines that customer orders of that magnitude demand.