Business
Hypersonic aircraft company moves headquarters from Atlanta to El Segundo
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.
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.
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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 Founders Fund.
Sam Altman, the CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, led a prior $100-million funding round in 2022. The company said it has now raised $500 million in equity and debt.
Hypersonic planes and weapons are at the cutting edge of military research and development. China and Russia have developed the weapons, which are viewed as strategic threats, with Russia deploying them in Ukraine.
Missile development also is taking place in the United States, including at legacy defense contractors Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, as well as Torrance startup Castelion.
Hermeus is developing supersonic and hypersonic aircraft that are not only autonomous but also reusable, like any modern jet. The aircraft would have multiple uses, including as a strike fighter, conducting reconnaissance and transporting cargo.
“What we are building here is not just an airplane, it is a platform,” Piplica said.
The company, founded in 2019, flew its first prototype, Quarterhorse Mk 1, in May 2025 during a short low-speed flight at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert.
Hermeus’ headquarters in El Segundo. The aerospace firm has begun moving into its 67,000-square-foot offices and will take full occupancy early next year.
(Hermeus)
It flew its first second aircraft in February at Spaceport America over White Sands Missile Range airspace in New Mexico. The Quarterhorse Mk 2.1 plane is three times larger than the initial prototype and about the size of an F-16. The goal is to reach supersonic speeds.
Hermeus plans to continue testing aircraft at the isolated missile range, where it can fly faster while not endangering structures or anyone on the ground.
Since 2021, the firm has operated out of a 110,000-square-foot facility in Atlanta, where it has its offices as well as design and production operations.
It will retain the site and use the entire space for production.
Georgia is the home of multiple aerospace manufacturing facilities, including Northrop Grumman.
“That talent base [in Georgia] is extremely aligned to large-scale aerospace manufacturing. Prototyping is a whole different world — different skill sets, different capabilities,” said Piplica, who had been an executive at Atlanta hypersonic research company Generation Orbit before co-founding Hermeus.
The aerospace firm has begun moving into its 67,000-square-foot offices at 888 North Douglas St. in El Segundo and will take full occupancy early next year. The Southern California operation will employ more than 200 people by next year, adding hundreds more in the coming years, executives said. Hermeus currently employs about 300.
The company is currently building its third Quarterhorse aircraft, which it expects will fly faster than Mach 2, in the Atlanta facility. It is expected to fly later this year. The fourth Quarterhorse will be built in El Segundo — with the goal of hitting Mach 3. It should fly next year with the military showing interest in a plane flying at that speed, Piplica said. .
Its hypersonic plane, designed for defense and national security missions, is farther off and dubbed the Darkhorse. Reaching Mach 5 involves the use of a so-called ramjet, which is similar to a traditional jet engine but doesn’t have any moving parts.
Hermeus does engine testing in Jacksonville, Fla., and has engineering offices in Hawthorne that it plans to retain.
In El Segundo, it’s leasing space in two buildings in a 30-acre complex Hackman Capital Partners acquired from Northrop Grumman in 2017 and spent $100 million making over into modern offices.
The complex includes the West Coast offices of L’Oreal USA, the headquarters of alternative protein company Beyond and labs that El Segundo aerospace company Varda Space Industries recently subleased from Beyond.
El Segundo Mayor Chris Pimentel said the city helped market the Hermeus space.
“We spoke loudly about the opportunity over there for a couple different players. I thought frankly that Hermeus had passed us by and that they were going to stay in Atlanta, so we’re delighted,” he said.
The city counts more than 40 aerospace and tech companies as having headquarters or major operations in El Segundo. In addition to contractors Boeing and Northrop Grumman, they include startups Picogrid and Sift. There are other companies, including suppliers.
Business
Older AC and fridge chemicals amp up climate change. Trump just rolled back limits on them
President Trump on Thursday announced that grocery stories and air conditioning companies will be allowed to keep using high-polluting refrigerants for longer than they would have under a law he signed during his first administration.
“This was a tremendous burden, a tremendous cost,” said Trump, surrounded in the Oval Office by executives from supermarket chains including Kroger, Fairway, Neimann Foods and Piggly Wiggly. “It was making the equipment unaffordable, and the actual benefit was nothing.”
The move loosens rules meant to restrict hydroflourocarbons, a class of climate-damaging chemicals used in cooling equipment. HFCs are known as “super pollutants” because their impact on climate change can be tens of thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide during their shorter lifespans.
In the move Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency extends the deadline for companies to comply with a 2023 rule transitioning refrigerators and air conditioners off HFCs and onto new cooling technologies. Reducing these chemicals and moving to cleaner refrigerants has long been a bipartisan issue.
Trump is also proposing exemptions from a rule requiring leak repairs on large-scale refrigeration systems.
The administration framed the changes as part of its effort to bring down high grocery costs. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said the actions will save $2.4 billion for Americans and safeguard 350,000 jobs.
“Americans who wanted to be able to fix their equipment were instead being required to buy far more costly new equipment and that just doesn’t make any sense,” said Zeldin.
David Doniger, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the move will not only harm the climate, but U.S. competitiveness in global refrigerant markets as well.
“The EPA is catering to a small group of straggling companies by derailing the shift away from these climate super-pollutants,” he said. “The industry at large supports the HFC phasedown and has already invested in making new refrigerants and equipment, currently installed in thousands of stores.”
Danielle Wright, executive director of the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council, an environmental nonprofit, said any perceived near-term savings from the rollbacks will be outweighed by the future costs.
“Business owners are far more worried about the escalating cost of keeping aging, high‑global-warming-potential equipment running than they are about the cost of installing new, compliant systems,” she said.
Trump dismissed the climate concerns, saying his changes “are not going to have any impact on the environment.”
He said he wants to get rid of the technology transition rule entirely in the future.
Business
Airbnb to add grocery delivery and car rentals ahead of World Cup
Airbnb unveiled a new set of services for guests on Wednesday, adding car rentals, airport pickup and grocery delivery to its online marketplace that connects travelers with local hosts.
Customers can now get groceries delivered to their Airbnb through a partnership with Instacart and have a driver meet them at the airport with Airbnb’s Welcome Pickups. The app is also offering luggage storage in partnership with Bounce and will add in-app car rentals later this summer.
At the same time, Airbnb is ramping up its use of AI by adding AI-powered review summaries and lodging comparisons, the company said.
The company has been expanding beyond lodging since last year, when it introduced Airbnb Experiences and Services, giving guests the option to book private tours and chef-cooked meals through the app.
In an earnings call earlier this month, the company’s chief executive, Brian Chesky, said the company is at “the very, very beginning of how AI is going to change how we all do our jobs.”
The changes are coming in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will take place in 16 cities across the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The company said its offering exclusive World Cup experiences, such as watch parties and access to stadiums.
“In terms of what we’ve seen in cumulative bookings heading into the event, the World Cup is slated to be the largest event in Airbnb’s history,” said the company’s chief financial officer, Ellie Mertz, on the earnings call.
Airbnb gained popularity for offering travelers unique and homey stays on other people’s property, but it added boutique hotel bookings to its platform late last year. The move had some customers questioning if the app was straying too far from its original purpose.
In its announcement this week, the company said it is partnering with more independent hotels in 20 top destinations, including New York, London and Singapore. On the earnings call, Chesky said hotels on Airbnb could become a multibillion-dollar revenue business.
The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2007 and gave homeowners the opportunity to earn money by renting out their space to travelers seeking something different from a hotel. Airbnb bookings can range from private bedrooms in a shared home to luxury mansions and yachts.
The company’s revenue grew 18% year over year to $2.7 billion in the first quarter, while net income increased slightly to $160 million. Airbnb’s new services and offerings could transform it from a home-sharing platform to a holistic travel marketplace, analysts said.
Shares of the company have increased by 14% over the past six months and fell by less than 1% on Thursday.
Business
SpaceX files to go public in huge IPO deal
Elon Musk wants to take investors on a ride to the moon — and beyond.
His pioneering rocket company SpaceX filed Wednesday for what’s expected to be the largest initial public offering in history, potentially raising at least $75 billion and valuing the company at as much as $2 trillion.
The registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an expected public offering next month explicitly sets aside stocks for retail investors, though the exact number will be spelled out in a later filing, as will the offering price and company valuation.
Interest in the stock offering is expected to be high despite the billionaire’s controversial politics, including his involvement last year with the Department of Government Efficiency, the makeshift cost-cutting effort that resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of government jobs.
“Potential investors are probably just as polarized as the electorate is too, given his dabbling in politics,” said Carol Schleif, chief market strategist for BMO Private Wealth. “But it’s not just the SpaceX IPO per se, it’s a bigger, broader excitement among investors for space investment in general.”
Investor interest was piqued by the Artemis II moon mission this year that SpaceX did not participate in, she said. However, the company is expected to play a larger role in future missions that take astronauts to the moon..
Ultimately, Musk, 54, wants to establish a colony on Mars but those plans have been set on the back burner, with NASA now focusing on moon missions.
Musk will remain the company’s chief executive and chairman. Under a dual-class stock structure as a holder of special Class B shares he will be able to control the election of directors, the filing says.
The IPO is expected to be at least twice as large as the current record holder: Saudi Aramco, the state-controlled national oil and gas company of Saudi Arabia, which raised nearly $30 billion in 2019.
Nearly two dozen banks will be underwriting the IPO and offering shares to investors, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Citigroup.
Founded in 2002 in El Segundo, SpaceX has revolutionized the aerospace industry by developing the reusable Falcon 9 rocket that has radically lowered launch costs.
The company moved its headquarters from Hawthorne to Texas in 2024. However, SpaceX retains large operations in the South Bay city and blasts off regularly from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Scores of former SpaceX employees have launched startups in Southern California, including rocket company Relativity Space, hypersonic missile startup Castelion and satellite manufacturer Apex Space.
Since developing its reusable rocket technology, SpaceX has established its Starlink network as the leading satellite-based broadband internet service. It also is moving into satellite-based cellular service and this year merged with Musk’s xAi artificial intelligence company that also included his X social network.
Marco Cáceres, an aerospace analyst at Teal Group, said that the advantage of going public for SpaceX lies in the IPO’s ability to raise a large amount of capital quickly to complete development of its Starship rocket.
“It is going to dominate the market even more than the Falcon 9 is dominating the market now,” he said. “That’s going to be ultimately what’s going to drive their business for the next 10 years.”
The 12th test launch of Starship is set for Friday from the company’s south Texas launch facility. The rocket is the third version of craft, standing more than 400 feet tall and with about three times the payload of the second version.
The regulatory filing claims that the market for its rocket, internet and mobile telephone businesses could be as large as $28.5 trillion.
SpaceX also plans to launch thousands of orbiting data centers powered by the sun that would perform AI calculations.
With the company making massive capital investments, it recorded a $4.28-billion loss in the first quarter. Last year, it recorded $18.7 billion in revenue and lost $4.94 billion, according to the filing.
The public offering is expected to hit the market next month after a “road show,” during which SpaceX will seek to drum up interest from institutional and retail investors.
It will arrive after a fairly quiet year for IPOs that was brightened last week when Cerebras Systems, a Sunnyvale company that makes semiconductors for AI supercomputers, went public.
Shares at Cerebras were offered at $185 and jumped 68% on its opening day. They closed Wednesday at $290.69.
Matt Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, said the SpaceX offering would dwarf that of Cerebras, as it is expected to raise more than every IPO combined in the last two years.
“A win here or a loss could really impact the IPO market,” he said. “The sheer size of this deal is going to make or lose fortunes.”
Among the oddest disclosures of the IPO is a decision by the company’s board in January to grant Musk 1 billion Class B shares if the company reaches a certain market capitalization and establishes a “permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.”
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