H3X Technologies boosted by Lockheed Martin investment

H3X Technologies has received multi-million dollar investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures, the venture arm of Lockheed Martin Corporation.

With LMV’s funding included, the total raised by H3X now comes to $9m. The investment will be used to accelerate development and commercialisation of H3X’s HPDM family of integrated motor drives — the HPDM-30, HPDM-250, and HPDM-3000. Some will also be directed towards the scale-up of their new headquarters facility in Louisville, Colorado for production.

“At H3X, we are building integrated motor drives from 30kW to 3MW that are unparalleled in performance in terms of specific power (kW/kg) and efficiency,” according to Jason Sylvestre, co-founder and CEO, H3X. “We are thrilled to have support from Lockheed Martin and are excited for the opportunity to work together and collaborate on next-generation defence technology using our motors.”

H3X has made advancements in several areas that enable the firm to reach continuous specific powers of >10kW/kg including: electromagnetics, material science, power electronics, additive manufacturing, motor control, and thermals.

Chris Moran, vice president and general manager, Lockheed Martin Ventures, said: “H3X is working on scaling transformative technologies that we believe have the potential to provide our customer with viable options for electrifying legacy, all-domain systems and components. Our investment in H3X reinforces Lockheed Martin’s commitment to developing predictive capabilities and scaling solutions that allow the US and its allies to stay ahead of threats.”

According to Sylvestre, when considering the power density and efficiency requirements that are needed for electrifying narrow-body jets, there really isn’t anything out there that does the job. “The Megawatt-class systems that you can buy today still use technology from the last century and are far too large, heavy, and inefficient to meet the demanding requirements of electric aviation,” he said. H3X has also found a number of other markets that can also benefit from their technology including defence, marine, specialised ground vehicles and power generation.