Defense / AerospaceAlabama

L3Harris Technologies

Defense / Aerospace · Huntsville, AL

L3Harris Technologies' board ousted CEO Chris Kubasik after an independent probe found he engaged in an inappropriate relationship with an employee. This is the second major incident for Kubasik—he was previously fired from Lockheed Martin in 2012 over a similar relationship with a subordinate. L3Harris shares fell 3% on the news. The $54 billion defense contractor has significant business with the Trump administration, including a $1 billion Pentagon stake in a spinoff of its rocket business and security upgrades to Trump's new Air Force One.

Founded

Region

Alabama

Investors

People

About Alabama

Alabama runs on two cities that rarely get named in the same breath. Huntsville earned the nickname Rocket City off Redstone Arsenal and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and Cummings Research Park -- the second-largest research park in the country, 300-plus companies and 26,000 employees -- still runs on that anchor: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Leidos/Dynetics sit alongside homegrown names like ADTRAN and Teledyne Brown Engineering. Birmingham carries the weight the history books actually assign the state -- the 1963 civil rights campaign, Kelly Ingram Park, the 16th Street Baptist Church -- while running its own real startup base out of Innovation Depot, anchored by UAB research, Regions Financial, and Shipt, the grocery-delivery startup Target acquired in 2017. Two cities, two different kinds of consequential, both real.

Region Stats

Total firms 97

VC / investors 1

Companies 71

Schools 25

Known For

Rocket Science

Steel & Civil Rights

UAB Research