Dallas-based private equity firm Trive Capital has acquired Hypergiant Industries, a Texas-based AI defense platform and solutions company. The deal complements Trive’s existing portfolio company, San Diego-based Forward Slope.

The acquisition brings together two companies bullish on AI-enabled national security tech. Hypergiant said the acquisition is a natural partnership between two companies that believe in next-generation technology to secure national defense across all military domains and critical infrastructure.

Hypergiant CEO Mike Betzer will continue leading the firm as it enters a new growth phase under Trive’s ownership. Founded in 2018, Hypergiant wet out to pioneer AI systems for space, aviation, marine, land, climate, and cybersecurity.

Hypergiant CEO Mike Betzer [Photo: Hypergiant]

Founder Ben Lamm says Trive is a strategic match

Hypergiant founder Ben Lamm, now CEO of Colossal Biosciences, said Betzer has shown “great integrity in his leadership and has continued to deliver on the company’s long-term vision of bringing next-gen AI assisted insights to the core groups that preserve and enable our way of life.”

Lamm told Dallas Innovates the acquisition timeline was 60 to 90 days—start to finish—though Hypergiant hadn’t been seeking a sale.

“Hypergiant wasn’t looking to sell. Through our short history, we have had various parties from defense primes to strategics to other PE firms look to acquire Hypergiant,” Lamm said.

But he said Hypergiant and Trive made a strategic match.

“Trive shared our long-term vision for the intersection of AI with space, critical infrastructure, and defense,” Lamm said. “This 100% aligned outlook on the industry and where it could be improved made a strategic alignment and acquisition easy for everyone to get their heads around.”

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Hypergiant has around 200 employees, has been hiring seven people a week, and recently won a $62 million Department of Defense contract, Lamm said. The company is also profitable.

Hypergiant Co-Founder Ben Lamm [Image: Hypergiant]

Hypergiant emerges as an AI leader in defense solutions

Over five years, Hypergiant has emerged as a leader in AI-powered cloud command and control tech, the company said.

Hypergiant’s geospatial data visualization and action platform called Command Center ingests information, analyzes threats, makes AI recommendations, and delivers insights.

To date, Hypergiant has won numerous awards for those AI defense solutions. It’s now focused on scaling the spatial intelligence and command software capabilities.

“Hypergiant’s unique geospatial visualization has positioned the company at the leading edge of C5ISR technologies that address mission-critical defense priorities,” said Trive Partner David Stinnett, adding that Hypergiant can rapidly deliver actionable insights to warfighters in an increasingly complex battlefield.

The deal formalizes a partnership between Hypergiant and Trive’s portfolio company Forward Slope, Stinnett noted. “We are thrilled to partner with Mike and the Hypergiant team to support the company in its next chapter of growth,” he said.

David Stinnett, partner at Trive Capital [Image: Trive Capital]

“America must innovate”

Lamm said Hypergiant already has a strong defense rep working with the Army, Space Force, and Air Force. Forward Slope has strong ties to the Navy, he notes.

“America must innovate to bolster our national security against near-peer adversaries who will soon be utilizing AI-powered hyper-connected systems themselves,” Lamm said.

He said the answer is a Common Battle Management Interface where data informs real-time decisions and is shared instantly across domains—what Hypergiant provides.

Hypergiant builds the Common Battle Management Interface for Cloud Based Command and Control, one of the DOD’s largest AWS customers.

Paired with Starlink, it provides a robust “on the move” capability that will disrupt targeting and support future JADC2 tech, the company said.

Clint Crosier, director of Aerospace and Satellite Solutions at AWS says Hypergiant AI solutions solve “complex challenges.”

Crosier, who says AWS is “committed to supporting Hypergiant’s efforts,” sees cloud-based tools as a “must for satisfying government customer requirements well into the future.”

Other Hypergiant customers include the U.S. Air Force, Space Force, Boeing, Homeland Security, Booz Allen Hamilton, NASA, the Army, and National Reconnaissance Office.

The company has also earned recognition for futuristic inventions like its AI-enabled Eos Bioreactor, Project Orion, Disaster Mapping System, Chameleon satellite prototypes, and Project Argus.

Hypergiant’s Eos Bioreactor was on display at the FUTURES exhibition at Smithsonian Institution’s Arts & Industries Building in 2021. [Image: Rockwell Group]

New growth phase

“Space, defense, and American critical infrastructure all face similar challenges and need AI-enabled common operating pictures for quick and informed decision-making,” said CEO Betzer. “We are excited to partner with Trive to accelerate adoption of our platform and offerings to an even broader set of private and public sector clients.”

Betzer says the company’s approach is to “take government-funded projects, where we are building highly performant and secure, battle-ready solutions, and bring that technology to the private sector with mission-specific customization.”

Lamm co-founded Hypergiant with an AI-enabled approach to an advanced visual multimodal to help organizations across space, defense, and critical infrastructure. Its investors include lead investor Align Capital along with GPG, Perot Jain, Beringer Capital, and Capital Factory.

The Trive deal comes after Hypergiant’s most recent expanded $62 million contract award from the U.S. Air Force around its command-and-control platform offering.

Hypergiant Command Center common operating picture for America’s critical infrastructure. [Image: Hypergiant]

“Hypergiant is helping to shift the dynamics of warfighting capabilities, from data starved and uninformed to data-rich and AI-enabled,” Dr. Rob Slaughter, U.S. Air Force Major (Retired) and co-founder and former director of the Air Force’s Platform One.

“We are in a values competition with our adversaries, and we need a digital advantage,” he said. Hypergiant partnerships help “accelerate mission values at this urgent time in our history.”

Trive Capital has more than $4 billion of regulatory assets under management. The firm focuses on investing equity and debt in what it sees as strategically viable middle-market companies with the potential for transformational upside through operational improvement.

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