Robot factories and hypersonic missiles: JPMorgan Chase’s first $5 billion of defense investments

JPMorgan Chase has made $5 billion in startup investments in the first year of its U.S. security and resiliency initiative, the company said Monday, a faster-than-expected pace that indicates the bank is finding plentiful opportunities in emerging defense, manufacturing and supply chain firms.

The bank, which last year said it would deploy $10 billion into startups over a decade, may expand the program beyond that initial dollar amount, JPMorgan co-president Doug Petno told CNBC in an interview.

Todd Combs, the former Berkshire Hathaway executive who leads the JPMorgan group in charge of making startup investments, has “hit the ground running,” Petno said. “He’s done a great job and put us in some really interesting companies,” he added.

Most of those investments have yet to be disclosed, but two known stakes seem emblematic of the project’s mission to bolster companies that are needed for a more dangerous and chaotic era of geopolitics. JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, has taken direct stakes in defense-related startups Hadrian and Castelion.

Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as trade disputes with China, have threatened the flow of energy and key components needed for U.S. industries and defense, which spurred JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon into creating the initiative a year ago.

He put Petno, widely seen as one of two key possible successors, in charge of the overall investment project. Combs, a former board member of the bank, reports directly to Dimon.

The scope of the project extends beyond supply chain, defense and manufacturing to include frontier technologies and the pharmaceutical and health-tech industries.

“There’s a lot of really interesting companies that have been working to solve some of these problems,” Petno said.

These “early venture-stage, advanced manufacturing companies have found ways to build these capabilities in the U.S.” rather than relying on overseas trading partners, he said.

In August, the bank helped lead a $1.4 billion funding round in Hadrian, which builds automated factories that make parts for the defense, aerospace and maritime sectors. A California factory run by Hadrian has 10 robots for every human employee, according to the startup’s founder.

That month, JPMorgan was also involved in a $1 billion funding round for Castelion, whose flagship product is a relatively low-cost hypersonic missile called Blackbeard. Castelion was founded in late 2022 by a group of former SpaceX engineers.

“Our approach is to find generational companies and partner with them for the long term,” Combs said in a statement Monday.

“Putting more than $5 billion to work in our first year shows how many exceptional businesses are building in industries that strengthen critical supply chains,” Combs said.

Before the defense initiative, the bank had moved away from taking startup stakes, which can be relatively risky bets on unproven technologies. JPMorgan spun off its private equity business, One Equity Partners, more than a decade ago.

In its more traditional role, JPMorgan has also financed and facilitated more than $230 billion for industries that support American national interests, according to the bank.

That part of its security and resiliency project, meant to hit $1.5 trillion over 10 years, is led by Jay Horine, a former co-head of investment banking.

JPMorgan built a team of about three dozen bankers for the project, who are aided by hundreds more across the firm, as it expanded the initiative to Europe and Canada.

Its bankers are mapping distribution lines for key products, from submarines and missiles to aircraft, to identify suppliers that may lack the capital or capacity to meet rising demand, according to Petno.

JPMorgan is also in regular communication with the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Commerce about the government’s needs, he said.