WHAT'S NEXT?! Montana — August 2026

Hard to believe the summer is over…it was a busy news month for Montana in August. Under the surface, there is much needed capital formation support developing across the state with both MSU and UM making concerted efforts to provide the support and guidance to help commercialize IP as well as guide early stage founders. A new hardware focused fund, Headwaters Seed Stage Fund I launched as well and a new angel group is forming in the Flathead area. We will be sharing more here over the coming months.

August brought outside capital into Montana companies: a $42 million private fiber build between Billings and Bozeman, and a Pittsburgh private equity firm taking majority ownership of a Butte manufacturer. Here is what happened.

Great Falls-based Vision Net announced the launch of the Discovery Network, a 163-mile fiber corridor connecting Billings and Bozeman. The company describes it as a fully funded private investment of $42 million by Vision Net, its shareholder companies and partners. The network is built on Ciena's 6500 platform with WaveLogic technology, providing an 800 gigabits-per-second capable foundation with a path to 1.6 terabits per second. Vision Net said the corridor is designed to carry AI transport workloads between edge data centers, and lists education and research collaboration, startups, quantum computing, mobile wireless AI, healthcare diagnostics and public-sector initiatives among its intended uses. The Discovery Network was built in partnership with Montana telephone cooperatives that are Vision Net shareholders, including 3 Rivers Telephone Cooperative, Range Telephone Cooperative, Interbel Telephone Company, Lincoln Telephone Company, Nemont Communications, Northern Telephone Cooperative, Southern Montana Telephone Company and Triangle Communications. Vision Net was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Great Falls. (August 27) Read more

Continuim Equity Partners acquired a majority interest in Resodyn Corporation and the assets of Resodyn Acoustic Mixers, together with growth capital to fund the company's next phase of expansion. Resodyn is headquartered in Butte and was founded in 1994 by Lawrence Farrar. It designs, manufactures and sells ResonantAcoustic Mixing systems, a patented non-contact technology that applies low-frequency, high-intensity acoustic energy to mix materials, sold into aerospace and defense, pharmaceutical, chemical, additive manufacturing, and battery and energy storage markets, and installed in more than 40 countries. Farrar will remain a shareholder and moves from President and Chief Executive Officer to Chief Technology Officer. The transaction is the fifth platform acquisition by Continuim's Fund II and its eleventh since the firm's inception. Liberty Ridge Advisors served as financial advisor to Resodyn. (August 27) Read more

AirJoule Technologies (Nasdaq: AIRJ) of Ronan entered an exclusive sales agreement making Kubota Corporation the exclusive sales channel for AirJoule systems into multi-unit residential developments in Texas and California, with two AirJoule Core systems to be deployed near Corpus Christi, Texas and Irvine, California beginning in the third quarter of 2026. In the same second-quarter update, the company said it commissioned its first full-scale AirJoule Prime system at its Newark, Delaware facility in May, received an Expo City Dubai Green Licence in July, and has an AirJoule Core system operating at GE Vernova's Advanced Research Center Frontier Campus. AirJoule ended the quarter with $41.4 million of cash, or $43.0 million combined with its joint venture, and no debt. (August 13) Read more

Separately, AirJoule and the Net Zero Innovation Hub for Data Centers announced a strategic collaboration to examine how waste heat from data center operations can feed heat-to-water systems, including plans to deploy and validate an AirJoule Prime system at a Hub member site in 2026 for testing inside a commercial data center. The Hub is led by APL, Danfoss, Data4, Google, Microsoft, Schneider Electric and Vertiv. (August 18) Read more

Montana Renewables, the Great Falls renewable fuel producer, will supply up to 30 million gallons of neat sustainable aviation fuel annually to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport through the Minnesota SAF Hub, delivered under its existing Shell offtake agreement. The company's partnership with the hub began in 2024 with a first SAF shipment to MSP made from winter camelina. (August 4) Read more

In its second-quarter results, Calumet reported that Montana Renewables completed the first phase of its MaxSAF 150 expansion. The renewables business began a planned turnaround and the expansion in March, ran through April, and restarted operations in early May. The Montana/Renewables segment reported $26.6 million of Adjusted EBITDA with Tax Attributes for the quarter. (August 7) Read more

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PSQ Holdings (NYSE: PSQH) of Bozeman reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $7,132,526, up 108% from $3,431,876 a year earlier, with a net loss of $5,621,091 ($1.54 per share) and non-GAAP operating income of $381,400, against a non-GAAP operating loss of $2,729,743 a year earlier. The company disclosed that on July 28 it agreed to sell its EveryLife baby products brand to FreeHold Brands, LLC for $5.5 million. (August 4) Read more

The company also closed a private placement with gross proceeds of approximately $1.3 million, issuing 361,388 shares of Class A common stock at $3.60 per share, priced at a premium to the most recent closing price, with no warrants or other derivative securities included. (August 13) Read more

On the commercial side, PSQ Payments and Credova were named the exclusive payment processor and exclusive consumer credit provider across Rayon AI's operations and commerce platform for the American firearms industry, including its direct-to-consumer storefront product (August 6). Read more Roja, a white-label earned wage access platform, also selected PSQ Payments to process the disbursements and repayments running through its platform, which PSQ describes as its entry into the earned wage access vertical (August 3). Read more

Belgrade-based Xtant Medical Holdings (NYSE American: XTNT) signed an exclusive partnership with BioHorizons, a Henry Schein company, making BioHorizons the exclusive distributor of Xtant's allogeneic growth factor technology into the dental and oral-maxillofacial procedure markets in the United States and Canada. BioHorizons will private-brand the technology, which Xtant markets as OsteoFactor Pro, as Prolifica. (August 27) Read more

Earlier in the month the company reported second-quarter revenue of $23.0 million against $35.4 million a year earlier, a decline it attributes primarily to the December 2025 sale of its non-core Coflex/CoFix assets and international hardware business to Companion Spine and to license revenue that ceased at the end of 2025. Gross margin was 57.9% against 68.6%, and the company posted a net loss of $9.4 million against net income of $3.6 million. Xtant reduced full-year 2026 guidance to $99 million to $103 million from $101 million to $105 million. In the quarter it took exclusive U.S. commercial rights to Dilon Technologies' HEMOBLAST Bellows, hiring Dilon's approximately 20-person U.S. sales team, and launched Trivium Shaped. (August 11) Read more

GL Solutions, the Kalispell regulatory software company, was selected by the Suffolk County Police Department in New York to deliver a pistol permitting system replacing the legacy platform used by the department and the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office. Client executive Michelle Shaffer said the engagement followed more than two years of discussion and planning. (August 13) Read more

The Oklahoma Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training also awarded GL Solutions a contract to modernize its licensing systems, procured through the statewide Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services contract. GL Solutions' other Oklahoma clients include the Construction Industries Board and the State Board of Osteopathic Examiners. (August 24) Read more

onX, the Missoula digital mapping company, launched the Public Land Comment Hub, a free interactive map and dashboard aggregating active public comment periods and proposals from the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Users can filter by agency, review summaries of proposed actions, see deadlines, and link to the relevant federal comment portals. (August 4) Read more

Pathlabs, the Missoula media execution firm, was named the 2026 MarTech Breakthrough Award winner for Overall AdTech Solution of the Year. The award recognizes the company's Media Execution Partnership, under which Pathlabs works as an extension of an independent agency across media planning and buying, activation, optimization, analytics and reporting, while the agency keeps control of strategy and the client relationship. (August 19) Read more

Volair Technologies Incorporated (VTI Aerospace) of Bozeman is developing AI-enabled navigation technology for the U.S. military intended to let crewed and uncrewed aircraft take off and land when GPS and ground-based radio navigation are jammed or degraded. Founder and CEO Eric Muir said the system uses onboard sensors in place of GPS, including at austere sites such as dirt strips. (August 5) Read more

LinQ Photonics, based in Bozeman, was selected a winner of the U.S. Army's xTech|Phantum competition for coherent photonics technology that lets operators establish alternative communication pathways in environments where conventional radio-frequency systems are congested, detected, disrupted or denied. The award carries a $20,000 cash prize and the opportunity to participate in a Phase I Army Small Business Innovation Research grant valued at up to $300,000, supporting a proof-of-concept over six months. Co-founder and CEO Caleb Rohn said the company will work with Army stakeholders to advance the technology toward a field-relevant capability. (August 12) Read more

University of Montana researchers released NAIP-CHM, a free nationwide mapping application showing the height and structure of trees and shrubs. UM research scientists Scott Morford and Anthony Marcozzi said the data supports land-management decisions and the assessment of wildfire risk and fire behavior. Nearly all funding for the project came from the USDA, and the researchers are working with the Forest Service. (August 3) Read more

Matt Jaffe, an assistant professor in Montana State University's Department of Physics, received an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator award providing $150,000 in research funding each year for three years. The work covers atom-photon interactions in optical cavities, with applications in quantum computing and quantum sensing. Jaffe's group found that manipulating the placement of mirrors and lenses inside a cavity can change the shape of light beams and how they interact with atoms. Two students are funded by the award. (August 24) Read more

Harmen Steele, PhD, started as Director of Technology Transfer at the University of Montana. In his second week he was meeting researchers, entrepreneurs and organizations across UM and the surrounding community, and is rebuilding the Innovation at UM website, handing over 200 pages of content to UM communications. He asked companies, researchers and entrepreneurs who have not yet connected with him to get in touch. (August 5) Read more

Graham Conran / Managing Director / Frontier Angels