The Aerospace & Defense Mega Trend

Godspeed Godspeed

5 days ago

4 MIN READ

What a wild week.

The S&P 500 settled above 6,000 for the first time since February 21st. The Nasdaq 100 composite is a mere 2% shy of an all-time high. And even the small-caps appear to break out.

Industrials were the first sector to close at a weekly all-time high. Tech appears to be next.

Aerospace and Defense continues to fly high.

Meanwhile, Tesla tumbled double digits due to Elon and Trump’s twitter feud. That same day – Microsoft marched to an all-time high… Technology continues to accelerate at Godspeed.

In case you missed it – this week, Dr. Phil Pearlman appeared on Godspeed Today. We discussed heuristics for irrational exuberance, his magic moment with ChatGPT and much more.

Let’s dive in…

America’s New Era of Aviation

Friday, President Trump signed three executive orders aimed to accelerate the development of eVTOL aircraft and supersonic commercial flights.

These directives instruct the FAA to expedite regulations for beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone operations and to lift the ban on overland supersonic flights. A new federal task force will also monitor national airspace for drone-related threats.

Trump’s orders will likely accelerate the commercialization of aerospace and defense innovation.

Here’s the White House with more.

Anduril Secures $2.5B

Anduril Industries, Palmer Luckey’s private defense technology company raised $2.5B via a16z, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Altimeter and other VCs at a $30.5B valuation.

The company’s newly priced stock allows it to make acquisitions and build onto its fast-growing momentum. In 2024, the company nearly doubled revenue and secured ~$1.5B in sales contracts.

A new era in aerospace and defense is here. Both public and private markets provide signals of a mega trend.

Perplexity Integrates SEC Filings

Perplexity now provides direct access to SEC/EDGAR data within its LLM. This enables users to ask questions about company earnings, risks, strategies and receive answers sourced in official filings.

The company seeks to make complex financial data easily accessible and simple to understand. The integration works across Perplexity’s Search, Research and recently launched Labs functions.

Its Enterprise Pro tier offers SEC insights alongside Factset’s M&A and transcript data, Crunchbase’s firmographic data and internal company files.

If you’re a ChatGPT loyalist, I understand – but I also suggest you play with Perplexity. It’s a powerful tool.

Amazon Leans In

Amazon unveiled a new R&D group focusing on “agentic AI” to enhance its robotics capabilities. Agentic AI allows systems to perform complex, multi-step tasks with minimal human intervention.

The goal is to develop warehouse robots capable of understanding and executing commands in natural language such as, “please unload the trailer.”

In addition to its new division, Amazon explores the deployment of humanoids for package delivery assistance.

The logistics giant has leaned into the AI-infused paradigm shift – we love to see it.

The stock has slightly ticked higher since its May 12th gap on tariff talk. $AMZN is within 11% of an all-time high.

Lunar Crash Landing

Thursday, ispace – a Japanese space company experienced its second lunar landing failure.

Its uncrewed lander, Resilience, lost communication during its descent and likely crash-landed in the Mare Frigoris region. Early analysis indicates a malfunction in the laser rangefinder, preventing accurate altitude measurements.

Resilience carried several payloads, including the Tenacious – Europe’s first lunar rover – designed to collect regolith samples and conduct experiments on algae-based food production and water electrolysis. The mission also featured a miniature art installation by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.