Rocket fuel startup founded at Purdue acquired
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A West Lafayette-based startup that manufactures solid rocket motors and rocket fuel is under new ownership. Purdue University said Monday that Adranos Inc. has been acquired by Anduril Industries, a defense products company headquartered in Costa Mesa, California.
Financial terms of the deal, which was first announced Sunday in The Wall Street Journal, were not disclosed.
Adranos was co-founded by Brandon Terry and Chris Stoker in 2015. Terry, then a postdoctoral student in Purdue’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, invented ALITEC, a high-performance solid rocket fuel the company says gives greater payload capacity, range and speed to launch systems while also being more environmentally friendly.
The company took part in the Purdue Innovates accelerator program, and quickly began to grow its profile.
“Thanks to the Purdue Research Foundation, Adranos was able to transform its lab-scale technical innovation into a state-of-the-art rocket fuel production facility,” Terry said in written remarks. “We have been able to move so fast because of Purdue’s amazing entrepreneurial resources.”
After raising nearly $1 million in funding, Adranos won the U.S. Army’s inaugural xTechSearch competition with ALITEC, earning more than $350,000 in additional funding in the process.
The following year, the company was named to the Pepperdine University Graziadio Business School’s Most Fundable Companies list. Adranos also broke ground on a $10 million production facility in the Purdue Research Park, which opened last September.
Adranos also closed on a $20 million Series A round of funding in April 2022 to continue the development of its solid rocket fuel and motors, which are designed for multiple military and commercial applications, including tactical missiles, hypersonics and missile defense.
Adranos also operates a solid rocket motor production facility in McHenry, Mississippi, as well as an engineering office in Huntsville, Alabama.
The company did not specify whether any jobs would be affected by the acquisition.