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.
Elon Musk founded SpaceXin 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.
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.
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