For years, Will Somerindyke sold weapons of war around the world: artillery shells to Ukraine, grenades to U.S.-backed rebels in Syria. With relationships with dozens of top military buyers, he quickly turned his company Regulus Global into one of America’s major international arms dealers.
Now, as Silicon Valley investors swarm to back multi-billion dollar defense startups with increasing fervor, Somerindyke is looking to make the jump from munitions middleman to manufacturer. He’s been quietly working on Union, a new venture-backed startup he claims will modernize ammunition factories with autonomous robotics and precision machining.
“I’ve been through a lot in 18 years in this space,” Somerindyke told Forbes. “If Union does its job correctly, we will be building millions of square feet of facilities with the ability to make a wide range of defense products.”
Union, which Somerindyke leads as CEO, appears to have made a solid start. In April it secured a massive $50 million seed funding round led by Bravo Victor Venture Capital, or BVVC. Other investors include Silent Ventures, IronGate, and RKKVC, a Poland-based single-family office. It plans to open its first artillery shell factory in Texas next month. And it recently secured a contract to sell those shells, which, if fulfilled, could bring in up to $225 million, according to Somerindyke.
But instead of approaching the problem with old-school manufacturing, Somerindyke and Musselman, who met more than a decade ago through a program for veterans, saw an opportunity to modernize weapons manufacturing, are using Silicon Valley software talent to implement autonomous systems. Since incorporating in October, Union has hired a suite of engineers from Tesla, SpaceX and Anduril.
Musselman has touted recent momentum to “reindustrialize” America and bring manufacturing back to the U.S. as necessary to combatting China’s manufacturing superiority. Other companies have joined the effort, including Hadrian, which does autonomous manufacturing, and Re:Build, a Massachusetts-based company that has been acquiring mom-and-pop factories and modernizing them; both could compete with Union’s entry into the market. Mussleman has also invested in other defense companies; after starting BVVC in 2023, he has written checks into drone company Firestorm and autonomous submarine startup Vatn Systems.
At the Texas facility, set to open this month, Union hopes to produce more than 300,000 shells next year, according to a company pitch deck shared with seed investors in January. By 2030, Union has told its investors, it plans to produce nine million shells a year, which it hopes will generate $3.5 billion in revenue.
Those are lofty figures. But Musselman sees the ongoing turbulence in the world — conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East — as proof of Union’s thesis. “We are running at a deficit of stockpiles or anything that goes boom around the world,” he said. “And that's going to be a leverage point for our adversaries.”
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For years, Will Somerindyke sold weapons of war around the world: artillery shells to Ukraine, grenades to U.S.-backed rebels in Syria. With relationships with dozens of top military buyers, he quickly turned his company Regulus Global into one of America’s major international arms dealers.
Now, as Silicon Valley investors swarm to back multi-billion dollar defense startups with increasing fervor, Somerindyke is looking to make the jump from munitions middleman to manufacturer. He’s been quietly working on Union, a new venture-backed startup he claims will modernize ammunition factories with autonomous robotics and precision machining.
“I’ve been through a lot in 18 years in this space,” Somerindyke told Forbes. “If Union does its job correctly, we will be building millions of square feet of facilities with the ability to make a wide range of defense products.”
Union, which Somerindyke leads as CEO, appears to have made a solid start. In April it secured a massive $50 million seed funding round led by Bravo Victor Venture Capital, or BVVC. Other investors include Silent Ventures, IronGate, and RKKVC, a Poland-based single-family office. It plans to open its first artillery shell factory in Texas next month. And it recently secured a contract to sell those shells, which, if fulfilled, could bring in up to $225 million, according to Somerindyke.
But instead of approaching the problem with old-school manufacturing, Somerindyke and Musselman, who met more than a decade ago through a program for veterans, saw an opportunity to modernize weapons manufacturing, are using Silicon Valley software talent to implement autonomous systems. Since incorporating in October, Union has hired a suite of engineers from Tesla, SpaceX and Anduril.
Musselman has touted recent momentum to “reindustrialize” America and bring manufacturing back to the U.S. as necessary to combatting China’s manufacturing superiority. Other companies have joined the effort, including Hadrian, which does autonomous manufacturing, and Re:Build, a Massachusetts-based company that has been acquiring mom-and-pop factories and modernizing them; both could compete with Union’s entry into the market. Mussleman has also invested in other defense companies; after starting BVVC in 2023, he has written checks into drone company Firestorm and autonomous submarine startup Vatn Systems.
At the Texas facility, set to open this month, Union hopes to produce more than 300,000 shells next year, according to a company pitch deck shared with seed investors in January. By 2030, Union has told its investors, it plans to produce nine million shells a year, which it hopes will generate $3.5 billion in revenue.
Those are lofty figures. But Musselman sees the ongoing turbulence in the world — conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East — as proof of Union’s thesis. “We are running at a deficit of stockpiles or anything that goes boom around the world,” he said. “And that's going to be a leverage point for our adversaries.”
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The White House announced Monday that President Donald Trump is slated to sign an order delaying his 90-day tariff pause by another month, as the president began announcing a suite of new tariff rates on foreign goods, sending letters to countries including Japan, South Korea and Malaysia that impose tariff rates of 25% or higher.
How Did Stocks React To The Tariffs?
Stocks slightly fell Monday in response to Trump sharing his letters to Japan and South Korea, with losses steepening immediately after the announcement. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were all down about 1% as of early Monday afternoon, while stocks of Japanese automakers Toyota and Honda had bigger slides, dropping by 4%.
Crucial Quote
“These Tariffs may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country,” Trump said in his letters Monday.
The Trump administration has not given any specifics on which countries it will prioritize for sending letters to or reaching trade deals with before the Wednesday deadline. The European Union has expressed confidence in recent days it will reach some sort of trade agreement with the U.S. before the deadline, with EU trade spokesperson Olof Gill saying Monday, “We’re fully geared up to get an agreement in principle by Wednesday, and we’re firing on all cylinders to that effect.” Thailand has also offered concessions to the U.S. in order to avoid a 36% tariff rate, Bloomberg reported Sunday, and negotiations reportedly still remain ongoing with countries including India, Indonesia and Switzerland.
Key Background
Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs have been a major source of controversy since the president first imposed them in early April, over concerns from economists that doing so would raise prices for U.S. consumers and harm the economy. The president imposed sweeping tariffs on nearly all countries that ranged from 10% to 50%, but paused the worst of the tariffs a week later, after the tariff announcement caused the stock market to plunge and sparked fears of a recession. Trump officials vowed to use the 90-day pause to aggressively reach trade deals with foreign countries—predicting they’d make “90 deals in 90 days”—but as of Monday morning, the U.S. had so far only reached formal agreements with the U.K., Vietnam and China. Trump’s letters to South Korea and Japan come after he has now been teasing for weeks that his administration would simply send out letters imposing new tariff rates if formal deals can’t be reached. The president previously suggested letters would start being sent last Friday, but when that date passed without any notices being announced, Trump then said Sunday evening the letters would begin rolling out Monday afternoon.
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