Defense manufacturing startup Critical Materials Group emerged from stealth today with a $10.3 million seed round to automate production of the explosives, propellants and pyrotechnics that go inside America's missiles, mortars and artillery shells. Overmatch Ventures led the round, joined by Victory Six Advisors and Fulcrum Ventures.
Solving the energetics bottleneck
Founded by former military officers, defense contractors and procurement specialists and led by CEO Kevin Capozzoli, CMG is targeting what the industry calls energetics — the hazardous chemicals that store and release the energy behind modern munitions. Capozzoli told SiliconANGLE that decades of consolidation have concentrated US energetics manufacturing in a handful of facilities that lack the surge capacity to scale when it matters, calling the bottleneck a strategic vulnerability that has depleted American stockpiles.
Modular factories, C-4 today
CMG's answer is modular, automation-ready production platforms designed to be spun up alongside legacy prime contractors rather than replace them. The company is already producing Composition-4 plastic explosive at a facility in Texas for undisclosed customers, and plans to use the seed capital to commission additional production platforms and expand engineering and operations teams while building the compliance infrastructure needed to become a reliable government contractor.
Timed to a Pentagon push
The round follows an urgent memorandum from Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg in August giving defense contractors 21 days to submit plans for significantly faster weapons delivery, with the Pentagon explicitly demanding that suppliers put capital "skin in the game." It also lands alongside earlier fundraises tracked on The Robotics Media, from Airbility's counter-UAS interceptors to the Pentagon's expanding GenAI stack.
Reporting based on coverage from SiliconANGLE, Defense Daily and PR Newswire.