Hadrian, the AI-driven advanced manufacturing company, has launched Hadrian Additive, a new division focused on delivering production-ready, scalable additive manufacturing to the U.S. defense sector and allied partners. This move integrates additive capabilities directly into Hadrian’s factory ecosystem, allowing critical defense programs to move from validated designs to full-scale production efficiently.
Expanding Additive Manufacturing for Defense
Hadrian Additive extends the company’s Opus factory platform to include additive manufacturing systems built for certification, repeatability, and sustained throughput. The first production-ready capacity is expected to come online in 2026 as part of Hadrian’s growing U.S. factory footprint. By embedding additive production into its existing factories, the division allows mission-critical components to be manufactured end-to-end in a single, integrated environment.
“America’s defense industrial base needs additive manufacturing that works in real production, not just in prototypes,” said Chris Power, Founder and CEO of Hadrian. “We’re building this capacity the same way we build our factories—engineered for qualification, throughput, and speed—so critical programs can scale when it matters most.”
Leadership and Strategic Vision
The new division is led by Matthew Parker, Vice President of Additive Manufacturing, who will focus on meeting the reliability, quality, and traceability standards required by defense and national security projects.
“Additive manufacturing only becomes strategic when it’s industrialized,” Parker said. “Hadrian Additive is designed as a production system from day one, integrated with our factory stack and capable of scaling as demand grows.”
To put the launch of Hadrian Additive in perspective, Hadrian has rapidly scaled since its founding in 2020. In mid‑2025, Hadrian closed a $260 million Series C funding round, bringing total capital raised close to $500 million to support expanded production and research initiatives. The company currently operates multiple California factories, including sites in Hawthorne and Torrance, and is building a 270,000‑square‑foot manufacturing hub in Mesa, Arizona, expected to be fully operational in early 2026 and create more than 350 new jobs. Hadrian also plans additional facilities and a 400,000‑square‑foot corporate and R&D headquarters, marking its transition from early-stage production to industrial-scale defense manufacturing capacity.
DoD 2025 Strategy Highlights AM Constraints for Production Readiness
In 2025, the U.S. Department of War emphasized that additive manufacturing must move from prototyping to certified, repeatable production to support operational readiness. At the AMUG 2025 Conference, officials highlighted bottlenecks in material qualification, digital workflow standardization, and throughput as the key limits preventing widespread use of AM in mission-critical systems.
Concrete steps illustrate how these constraints are being addressed. Velo3D’s CRADA with the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) aims to qualify metal AM processes and materials for flight-critical parts, tackling repeatability and certification bottlenecks. The Navy has also integrated AM into maintenance operations, cutting production times by up to 70% while formalizing material standards, a demonstration that scaling AM requires solving both technical and procedural limits, not just printing parts.
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Featured image shows U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, to Hadrian, joined by Ambassador Nicholas Merrick of the Czech Republic, Ambassador Joseph Popolo of the Netherlands, and Ambassador Tom Rose of Poland, visiting Hadrian facilities. Photo via Hadrian.
