Bluestone Investment Partners announced making a strategic investment in missile defense and space technology firm Qualis Corporation.
In a press release Thursday, John Allen, managing partner at Bluestone Investment Partners, said, “We at Bluestone have great admiration for Qualis’ history of performance and innovation. We are honored to have the opportunity to partner with the excellent Qualis team to support their continued technology development initiatives.”
Bluestone is a private equity firm focused on lower middle-market companies in the defense and government technology sector. Qualis’ expertise is in modeling and simulating radio frequency waveforms that enable the development of resilient communications and navigation in GPS-denied and contested environments.
At its Huntsville, Alabama headquarters, Qualis operates a laboratory featuring a hardware-in-the-loop, high-performance computing environment for advanced modeling and simulation. Customers include those from the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, the U.S. Air Force Test Center, the U.S. Space Force, the Space Development Agency, the Missile Defense Agency and NASA.
Bluestone completed the investment in Qualis through its recently established Small Business Investment Company vehicle. In June, the Small Business Administration granted Bluestone the first SBIC Critical Technologies Initiative license.
According to Rod Duke, president and CEO of Qualis, Bluestone’s newly awarded SBICCT license will advance the development of next-generation capabilities for national defense and help Qualis to continue delivering for its customers.