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Texas start-up bets big on American shipbuilding. 24 Jul 2026 by John Snyder Port of Brownsville, Texas, will be home to Saronic Technologies' new advanced, highly automated shipbuilding hub, targeted for commercial operation in 2028 In one of the biggest investments in US shipbuilding since President Trump took office for his second term, Saronic Technologies plans to spend US$3.2Bn to develop an advanced shipyard "built for software-defined shipbuilding and autonomous maritime systems" in the Port of Brownsville, Texas. The planned investment is second only in size to Hanwha Ocean's pledge to invest US$5Bn in Philly Shipyard, which it acquired for US$100M in 2024. Other shipbuilding investments revealed since President Trump's executive order on Restoring America's Maritime Dominance include Davie Defense's US$1Bn in the Gulf Copper facility in Galveston, Texas, and Hadrian's US$2.4Bn investment into a submarine component manufacturing facility in Alabama. The recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill is providing US$900M in funding for the Alabama project. Construction of Saronic's new shipyard, called Port Alpha, would begin this year, with commercial operations planned for 2028, according to an announcement on 16 July by Texas Governor Greg Abbott's office. "This investment is about more than constructing a shipyard" Port Alpha will initially be sited on 835 acres at the Port of Brownsville, with the opportunity to expand to almost 4,400 acres, and will encompass a shipyard and manufacturing facility capable of producing vessels up to 259 m long - longer than the US Navy's San Antonio-class Amphibious Landing Dock (LPD), which is used to deploy Marines, equipment and amphibious vehicles. Future expansion could support the production of vessels over 366 m long - longer than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Saronic said the site provides hundreds of acres of waterfront access, deepwater channel connectivity, multimodal logistics infrastructure, and room for long-term expansion. According to Governor Abbott, the shipyard would directly employ about 10,000 when it is fully built. Port Alpha could serve as a model for future greenfield shipyard development in the US. "America's maritime future depends on our ability to build again," said Saronic co-founder and chief executive, Dino Mavrookas. "Port Alpha is our commitment to that mission. Built from the ground up to deliver ships at a speed and scale not seen since World War II, this investment is about more than constructing a shipyard." In June, the US Department of Defense selected Saronic as one of seven companies to advance to at-sea testing of the medium unmanned surface vessel (MUSV). Established in 2022, the Austin-based startup launched its first 55.0 m Marauder-class MUSV at the end of May from its Franklin, Louisiana shipyard, and has been conducting in-water testing of the autonomous surface vessel. Three of its 7.3 m Corsair drone vessels were deployed by the US Navy to destroy an Iranian submarine and ship maintenance facility at the Bandar Abbas Naval Base near the Strait of Hormuz in July. Saronic holds a contract worth more than US$392M to produce Corsairs for the USN and plans to spend US$300M to expand the former Gulf Craft shipyard in Franklin. Reinvestment in American shipbuilding has been a top priority for the Trump Administration, as outlined in its Maritime Action Plan, and has received bipartisan support in Congress, which is considering the SHIPS for America Act. Agreement with SHI Saronic inked a partnership agreement with South Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) to accelerate autonomy-capable maritime systems and technologies to strengthen America's shipbuilding industrial base. The parties plan to use their combined expertise in maritime autonomy and shipbuilding to "explore advanced development of autonomy, AI-powered digital solutions, and production infrastructure, including robotics-based process automation across its shipyards, said Saronic in a social media post. The partnership was signed on 23 July at the launch of the Korea-US Shipbuilding Partnership Center (KUSPC) in Washington, DC, a newly formed organisation aimed at deepening shipbuilding cooperation between the two nations and sponsored by the US Department of Commerce and Republic of Korea Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Resources.

SpaceX alumni building remote-controlled construction equipment land $115 million fund round. Jul 14, 2026 - 19:17 TerraFirma's semi-autonomous construction equipment Courtesy: TerraFirma As SpaceX's Elon Musk sells investors on a space economy with life beyond Earth, a two-year-old construction startup founded by two of the company's former engineers is positioning itself for the future of interplanetary infrastructure. TerraFirma on Tuesday said it raised $115 million in a funding round with investments from Kleiner Perkins, Bain Capital Ventures, and defense tech companies SpaceX, Anduril and Hadrian. The Austin-based company uses a combination of interfaces, including Xbox controllers, to remotely operate construction equipment, and says its tools cut costs and improve safety. Long-term, the company wants to build on Mars. "Infrastructure is a bottleneck to basically every single industry that needs to innovate over the next couple of decades," CEO and co-founder Noah Schochet told CNBC. "There's such a deficit of people taking all of the great tech that has existed and been built for the last couple decades and bringing it" to the construction industry. The company plans to use the funding to hire 300 employees over the next year and build both a Texas factory and a mission control center. Terrafirma is part of a growing network of startups spun out of SpaceX that are looking to capitalize on the budding space economy. Other famous startups from former SpaceX alumni include hypersonic weapons maker Castelion and Realativity Space. SpaceX's historic $86 billion IPO last month, coupled with NASA's push to establish a lunar base on the Moon and Mars, has sparked fresh optimism for the sector. Over time, this future could include moving industry to Mars or the Moon to build solar cells and more easily launch data centers into space. Schochet and Noah McGuinness, the company's founders, met about a decade ago on the first day of engineering class at Princeton University. Over the next four years, the pair endured very similar course loads and worked on every project. After graduation, both founders landed at SpaceX. McGuinness worked on the government satellite program known as Starshield, while Schochet worked on Starlink and later Starship. While there, the team was under constant pressure to build and quickly scale, sometimes working in difficult conditions and facing infrastructure struggles, like reliable bathrooms. At the same time, the construction industry was working at a snail's pace, which sparked an idea: bring the speed of building at SpaceX to the construction industry. "We're building rockets the size of skyscrapers at one a month, and all those processes for mass manufacturing automation, none of them are showing up in construction," Schochet said. TerraFirma technicians use Xbox controllers to remotely operate heavy equipment Courtesy: TerraFirma Looking back, the pair described the experience as physically and mentally "rough," with days spent sleeping at their desks, but said it was "all worth it." About half of the company's engineering team also previously worked at SpaceX, Tesla and the Boring Company. For now, Terrafirma is set on proving its technology on Earth, with recent commercial projects including a sports arena and a Starbucks. But the firm hasn't lost sight of its long-term goal and plans to bid on any future moon projects. "The problem is you don't want to build a community based around a space economy that doesn't yet exist," Schochet said. "You want to build it around the economic drivers that truly drive the world today."