The San Francisco startup has hit a $2 billion valuation, landed a manufacturing deal with Johnson Controls, and is building an Arizona factory to mass-produce portable AI infrastructure for the military, energy companies, and beyond.
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While the biggest names in tech pour hundreds of billions into sprawling hyperscale campuses, a San Francisco startup called Armada is making a very different bet: that the future of AI infrastructure fits inside a shipping container.
Armada announced a $230 million oversubscribed Series B round at a $2 billion pre-money valuation, bringing the company\u2019s total funding to nearly $500 million. The round was co-led by BlackRock, Overmatch, and 8090 Industries, with strategic participation from Johnson Controls, NightDragon, Mitsui, and Singtel Innov8. Existing backers including Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Felicis, and Shield Capital also doubled down.
The capital arrives alongside a landmark manufacturing partnership. Johnson Controls, the 140-year-old industrial giant, will help Armada build Galleon Forge One, a dedicated factory in Arizona spanning up to 400,000 square feet. The facility is expected to create more than 500 jobs and begin continuous production of Armada\u2019s largest modular data center, the multi-megawatt Leviathan, this summer.
\u201cThe AI race will not be won by one-off projects,\u201d said Dan Wright, co-founder and CEO of Armada. \u201cIt will be won by the companies and countries that can manufacture, deploy, and continuously improve AI infrastructure, with speed, scale and sovereignty. At Galleon Forge One, we will do what America does best: build the industrial base to win.\u201d
From Suitcase to Megawatt Scale
Armada\u2019s product line, the Galleon series, ranges from Beacon, a suitcase-sized edge computing unit, to Leviathan, a containerized system capable of delivering multiple megawatts of AI processing power. Every unit ships in ruggedized enclosures designed to withstand extreme temperatures, physical shocks, and tampering attempts via embedded security sensors.
The key selling point is speed. While a traditional hyperscale data center can take years and billions of dollars to build, Armada says its modular systems can be deployed in days and connected directly to on-site energy sources such as solar installations, natural gas flares, or existing grid infrastructure. No specialized power delivery equipment is required.
That proposition has attracted customers across defense, energy, telecommunications, and mining sectors\u2014industries where connectivity is unreliable, security is paramount, and waiting years for a data center is simply not an option.
Defense and Energy Traction
Armada\u2019s customer roster already reads like a defense contractor\u2019s wish list. The U.S. Navy deployed Armada systems during the UNITAS multinational maritime exercise. The company is working with the U.S. Department of Energy on the Genesis Mission, an initiative connecting national laboratories, supercomputers, and research datasets into a shared AI platform. And a defense organization deployed one of Armada\u2019s Triton systems into the field in just six days.
On the energy side, Norwegian oil and gas company Aker BP is testing a Galleon modular data center on the Deepsea Nordkapp offshore drilling rig to support autonomous operations and AI-enabled workflows. In Australia, WinDC has selected Armada for a renewable-energy-powered portable AI factory initiative expected to scale to a 10MW-plus Leviathan deployment.
\u201cJohnson Controls is working with Armada to rapidly deliver secure modular data centers at scale,\u201d said Joakim Weidemanis, CEO of Johnson Controls. \u201cJohnson Controls\u2019 differentiated technology, U.S.-based manufacturing strength and Armada\u2019s edge computing expertise will deliver the thermal-critical environments that perform predictably, deploy quickly, and scale with confidence.\u201d
The Numbers Tell the Story
The company\u2019s growth metrics are staggering. Armada reported 540% year-over-year growth in customer bookings from FY25 to FY26. The first quarter of FY27 alone saw a 2,000% year-over-year increase in bookings. The company plans to scale output from dozens of Galleon units annually today to hundreds by year-end, with thousands targeted in subsequent years.
Armada has also built a software ecosystem around its hardware. Marketplace enables deployment of third-party AI tools on Galleon systems. Bridge lets customers monetize unused computing capacity by renting it to external users. Atlas integrates Starlink satellite connectivity through Microsoft Azure credits, and a Drones add-on provides fleet management and maintenance scheduling for unmanned aerial vehicles.
Technology partnerships with Microsoft, NVIDIA, Palantir, and Dell Technologies further extend the platform\u2019s reach. Armada recently announced that its Edge Platform will support NVIDIA AI Grid, enabling telecom operators and enterprises to deploy distributed AI infrastructure for latency-sensitive, real-time workloads.
Analysis: Why Modular Matters Now
Armada\u2019s ascent reflects a structural shift in how the AI industry thinks about infrastructure. For years, the conversation centered on who could build the biggest data center the fastest. But as AI workloads move from training in centralized clouds to inference at the point of need\u2014on oil rigs, naval vessels, mining sites, and disaster zones\u2014the bottleneck is no longer raw compute. It is the ability to get compute to where it matters, in days rather than years.
The geopolitical dimension adds urgency. Wright has framed Armada\u2019s mission explicitly around America\u2019s competition with China for AI leadership. That framing resonates with policymakers and defense officials who want domestically manufactured, rapidly deployable AI infrastructure that can operate in contested or sovereign environments. The partnership with Johnson Controls reinforces the domestic manufacturing angle at a time when onshoring critical technology supply chains has bipartisan support.
The $2 billion valuation, while substantial for a startup selling hardware in shipping containers, reflects investor confidence that edge AI infrastructure is not a niche\u2014it is the next major frontier. With nearly $500 million in total funding, a factory under construction, and bookings that suggest explosive demand, Armada is positioning itself as the company that builds the AI infrastructure the hyperscalers cannot reach.
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Armada was co-founded by Dan Wright and John Runyan. The company is headquartered in San Francisco.
“The AI race will not be won by one-off projects.”— Dan Wright, Co-Founder and CEO, Armada