WHAT'S NEXT?! Montana — July 2026

Its hot and smoky but the tech news keeps flowing. Lots to report on in this issue. The key takeaway ? Montana’s technology industry has hit a clear inflection point.

I am also excited to announce the launch of the Headwaters Seed Stage Fund. This is the largest fund to be launched and managed by Frontier Angels through Frontier Capital Management. The Headwaters Seed Stage Fund is focused on pre-revenue, hardware related technology start-ups. It is the hardest niche of the start up world to invest in but we have a team of advisors with deep domain experience to help screen and prioritize opportunities. You can check it out here

Montana's high-tech industry grew twice as fast as the overall Montana economy from 2014 to 2024, increasing its share of state GDP from 3.6 percent to 5 percent, according to the 2026 Montana High Tech Industries Report released by the Montana High Tech Business Alliance and the University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research. In 2024 the industry generated $7.9 billion in revenue and contributed $4.4 billion in value added. Average wages in Montana's tech sector reached $146,000 in 2025, about 2.4 times the statewide average of $62,000 per worker; as recently as 2018, Montana's computer systems design workers earned 35 percent less than their U.S. counterparts. Among responding firms, 87 percent use AI daily or occasionally and 76 percent call it moderately or extremely strategic to future growth. Respondents named access to capital their largest impediment to faster growth, followed by talent recruitment and customer acquisition. The report combines federal and private economic data with a statewide survey and is the most comprehensive assessment of the state's technology economy since 2020. (July 27) Read more

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Belgrade-based Bridger Aerospace (Nasdaq: BAER) secured a $58 million contract with Texas A&M Forest Service to acquire, modify, and deliver three King Air 360 multi-mission aircraft as the foundation of the state's wildfire aviation program, delivered over the next three years. The aircraft will be configured for wildland fire detection and situational awareness, emergency operations, cargo transportation, and medical evacuation. In 2024, Texas A&M Forest Service and local fire departments responded to 5,187 wildfires that burned 1,300,579 acres, including the Smokehouse Creek Fire, the largest in state history; the Texas legislature subsequently appropriated $257 million to the agency for the purchase, operation, and maintenance of wildfire suppression aircraft through HB500. All aircraft modifications will be performed in Texas. (July 27) Read more

Mobix Labs, a fabless semiconductor company, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Vision Aerial, a Bozeman manufacturer of unmanned aerial systems built to comply with National Defense Authorization Act supply-chain requirements. Mobix Labs plans to pay approximately $15 million in cash and company stock. The transaction is expected to close during the current quarter, pending standard closing conditions and shareholder approval. Vision Aerial's leadership team and Montana manufacturing operations are expected to remain in place, with the company folded into Mobix Labs' autonomous systems business. The agreement builds on a letter of intent disclosed earlier. (Announced July 24; reported July 27) Read more

Lumibird entered exclusive negotiations to sell its Medical division to IPG Photonics for an enterprise value of €300 million, with an earn-out of up to €50 million tied to performance in 2026 and 2027. The transaction could be finalized in the fourth quarter of 2026. The sale leaves Lumibird a focused photonics company: the retained Photonics division reported 2025 sales of €113.4 million and more than 600 employees, serving defense and space, environment, topography and safety, industrial and scientific, and medtech markets. Lumibird Photonics USA in Bozeman — the former Montana Laser Optics, Big Sky Lasers, and Quantel operation — sits in that retained division. (July 16) Read more

Separately, Lumibird agreed to sell its 37% stake in Cilas, sign a multi-year industrial partnership covering supplies for several strategic French defense laser programs, and take over Cilas's maintenance operations for the Laser MégaJoule facility. That transaction is expected to complete by the end of the third quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals. (July 24) Read more

Janicki Industries broke ground on its new manufacturing campus in Great Falls, marking the official start of construction on the company's $800 million investment in the region. The 1.6 million-square-foot campus, to be built in phases over the next decade, is expected to create 1,000 new jobs within five years and more than 2,000 by the time it is complete. Located on 180 acres within the AgriTech Park, the campus will expand Janicki's capabilities in advanced composites, precision machining, and metal fabrication for its aerospace, defense and space customers. The first phase is expected to open by the end of 2027. Speakers at the ceremony included Janicki President John Janicki, CEO Peter Janicki, Gov. Greg Gianforte, Great Falls Mayor Cory Reeves, and Great Falls Development Authority President and CEO Brett Doney. (July 13) Read more

United States Antimony Corporation leaders, joined by Gov. Greg Gianforte, officially marked the opening of USAC's critical-minerals mill near Radersburg on July 7. Ore from the company's mine at Stibnite Hill near Thompson Falls — and eventually from mines in Alaska — will be processed to a higher concentration at Radersburg before going to the Thompson Falls smelter for the final steps to produce ingots of nearly pure antimony. The company spent just under $5 million for the property and several million dollars more on improvements, and said the facility could eventually support about 20 to 22 jobs. The U.S. Department of Defense awarded USAC a $245 million contract last year to supply antimony for the national defense stockpile, and announced $27 million in March to help the company modernize its facilities. (July 7) Read more

Montana Renewables, LLC of Great Falls was the exclusive fuel supplier for low emissions testing on the Gulfstream G800, providing its MaxSAF sustainable aviation fuel, with Washington State University performing fuel-property characterization ahead of the flight. The campaign compared conventional Jet-A, low-sulfur Jet-A, and 100% neat hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids SAF at altitudes up to 50,000 feet. Preliminary data show a measurable reduction in contrail-forming particulate emissions when operating on neat SAF. (July 8) Read more

Guardian Metal Resources PLC entered into a strategic partnership with the Montana Mining Association on a tungsten mining and recovery pilot program supporting domestic defense applications, advanced in conjunction with Montana Technological University and the Army Research Laboratory. An initial 250–400 tonnes of stockpiled legacy ore will be transported from Guardian Metal's Tempiute tungsten project near Rachel, Nevada, to Philipsburg, Montana, for trial processing at a partner milling and processing facility. First shipments are expected by late summer 2026, subject to completion of metallurgical test work underway at partner laboratories in the U.S. and U.K., and pilot-scale test work to be completed on-site in Montana. (July 8) Read more

Missoula-based Submittable appointed Ben Chodor chief executive officer. Chodor succeeds Thor Culverhouse, who had served as CEO since 2020. Chodor most recently served as CEO of CallRevu, where he led the acquisitions of Calldrip and TotalCX; previously he was president of Notified and founded Stream57, acquired by West Corp, and Happtique. During Culverhouse's tenure Submittable raised a $47 million Series C in 2022 and acquired competitor WizeHive, and its BrightFunds and WeHero brands, in 2024. (July 28) Read more

Silver Bow Mining Corp. (NYSE American: SBMT), a minerals exploration company advancing Montana's historic Butte Mining District, appointed Doug Stiles president. Stiles has served as vice president of regulatory and external affairs since February 2026 and continues to report to Chairman and CEO Travis Naugle. He previously served as director of environmental operations for Hecla Mining Company, and has spent more than 25 years permitting, developing and operating Montana mining projects, including Rock Creek, Montanore and the Troy Mine. The company is advancing the high-grade silver-zinc Rainbow Block Project while targeting critical minerals including copper, manganese, germanium, gallium, indium, antimony and bismuth. (July 27) Read more

Bozeman-based Zoot Enterprises announced a partnership with Baselayer that brings Baselayer's real-time Know Your Business verification and fraud intelligence into the Zoot platform, expanding the business verification tools available to financial institutions using Zoot's decisioning system. Through the integration, institutions gain access to Baselayer's matching algorithm, live access to authoritative government data, identity and credit risk scoring, and its B2B fraud consortium. (July 23) Read more

Bridger Aerospace is partnering with TracPlus to bring the data platform's real-time aircraft position, aviation intelligence, and drop event data directly into Bridger's IGNIS software platform, so ground crews, aviation teams, and incident managers can see where aircraft are operating and where suppression activity has occurred in a single view. TracPlus serves more than 700 customers in over 40 countries and manages roughly 2,500 wildfire suppression aircraft on its platform. The integration follows Bridger's selection of FireFlyte, powered by TracPlus, for fleet-wide mission-data capture in June. (July 20) Read more

Separately, Bridger leased its two newest CL-215T Super Scoopers to Avincis and deployed them to support active wildfire suppression efforts in Portugal. (July 23) Read more

Aurora Innovation launched its second-generation driverless trucks on July 22 and plans to deploy the new fleet across its commercial network, which currently covers 10 driverless routes in the U.S. Sun Belt. The trucks are built on the International LT Series and carry Aurora's next-generation hardware, designed to last one million miles. Roush is installing redundant systems and integrating that hardware at a production facility dedicated to Aurora, and is positioned to reach an annual production run-rate of 1,000 Aurora trucks later this year. Two carriers signed on in the following week: Value Truck, which plans to run the Aurora Driver on the Dallas–Laredo and Fort Worth–Phoenix routes (July 27), and Charger Logistics, on Dallas–Laredo (July 28). Aurora's FirstLight Lidar is developed in Bozeman, where the company opened a 78,000-square-foot office and testing facility on Montana State University's Innovation Campus in December 2024, with R&D labs, a cleanroom manufacturing area, and a vehicle-testing garage. Aurora entered Bozeman through its 2019 acquisition of the lidar company Blackmore. (July 22) Read more

Bozeman-based Quiq announced Verified Intelligence, a set of capabilities designed to give brands the controls they need to deploy and operate agentic AI. It combines guardrails that check every response before it reaches a customer — the company's Verify Claim cross-references the AI's answer for accuracy — simulations that run hundreds of realistic multi-turn conversations before go-live, and step-by-step visibility into every decision the AI makes. Verified Intelligence is available now across the Quiq platform for all AI Agent deployments. (July 8) Read more

Missoula-based TOMIS released ai.vis, a tool that measures whether tour and activity operators are being cited by AI assistants. It runs an operator's buyer questions across the five major AI surfaces and scores citation share against competitors, clusters the questions where the operator is not cited into prioritized content recommendations, pulls the operator's own GA4 data to show the sessions and online revenue each assistant drove, and monitors which AI crawlers are reaching the site. (July 6) Read more

Floating Island International, founded by Bruce and Anne Kania on their property near Shepherd, has developed a technology it calls RAM — Removal of Aquatic Methane. The system oxygenates deep water, creating conditions that allow naturally occurring microbes known as methanotrophs to consume methane before it reaches the atmosphere. The company has operated commercially since 2005 and has launched more than 14,000 floating islands worldwide. It received its first U.S. patent for the technology in April 2025, and says discussions are underway for an 11-lake project in Alberta's Prairie Pothole Region. (July 16) Read more

U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll visited Montana State University on July 16 to meet with university officials and researchers about how MSU might expand the ways it helps with national security matters and the military's goal of being more responsive to the needs of the modern service member. The visit included MSU's MilTech offices and a tour of the Spectrum Lab. Bozeman-based Reveal Technology co-hosted the visit, according to its CEO, Garrett Smith. (MSU News, July 22) Read more

Montana State University marked the grand opening of the Combined State Labs building on the west side of South 19th Avenue in Bozeman. The tri-lab agricultural facility brings together MSU's Wool Lab, the Montana Department of Livestock's Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, and the Montana Department of Agriculture's Analytical Lab. Construction began in 2024, made possible through appropriations approved by the Montana Legislature during its 2021 and 2023 sessions, as well as the Montana Board of Regents' approval of using university land for the shared facility. The building replaces aging laboratory spaces, some of which were more than 70 years old. (July 24) Read more

Morgan Hasenmyer, a Montana State University doctoral student, is one of five women worldwide to earn the 2026 Women in Optics scholarship. Her research focuses on remote sensing of aerosols in the atmosphere using specialized polarization imaging technology. The work is part of the National Science Foundation-funded SMART FIRES project, a multi-institution effort studying wildfire science through sensors, machine learning and artificial intelligence. (July 10) Read more

Since early June, 10 Missoula community members — including some current University of Montana students and recent graduates — have met every Wednesday evening for the VBX Entrepreneurship Workshop Series, run by Erik Guzik, an assistant clinical professor of management and entrepreneurship in UM's College of Business. The meetings are held in the Missoula office of Blackfoot Communications, the main sponsor of the series. Guzik provides the workshop in association with CoBuild Montana, a new venture he started with Kirstin Miller, an urban planner and executive director of EcoCity Builders; CoBuild Montana plans to become a cooperative that Montana residents can join. To expand the work of CoBuild Montana and the VBX Venture Studio, Guzik opened a coworking space in downtown Missoula at 125 1/2 W. Main St. (July 23) Read more

Graham Conran / Managing Director / Frontier Angels