With a wind change in Washington, NC wants bigger piece of the defense pie
I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.
RTI International, the research nonprofit and oldest tenant of Research Triangle Park, employed 5,956 staff members worldwide as recently as 2023. This week, the organization shared its current headcount is 3,844.
This 34% decline mirrors the revenue loss RTI estimated from the Trump administration canceling an unprecedented number of its federal projects this year. These grants covered education, health and foreign aid. In the Triangle, RTI’s local workforce has gone from 2,300-plus employees to 1,885.
Where does RTI look now? Not on what was lost, its CEO Tim Gabel told me during an interview this week in Durham.
“I think that the current administration’s perspective on foreign assistance will be their perspective,” he said. “The way I think about it is — we look to the future. What do we think the future is going to be?”
Gabel sees a future with more opportunities in the private sector and the military. “[Defense is] probably a surge for us,” he said.
Trump administration officials outlined the president’s $1.01 trillion-defense budget, a 13% increase over last year. With foreign aid gutted and Biden-era clean energy programs out of favor, North Carolina leaders say the state should position itself to get a bigger piece of this defense pie.
North Carolina ranks 17th in defense spending, according to U.S. Defense Department data, and 28th when counting spending as a percentage of GDP.
“If the federal investment is really shifting somewhat out of a clean energy space, one thing we think it’s going to shift towards is defense and defense technology,” state Secretary of Commerce Lee Lilley said in an N&O interview earlier this month. “North Carolina should be a leader in that. We’re one of the largest military footprints in all the United States.”
Lilley credited the Biden-era CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act with helping North Carolina land a series of new factory projects. The IRA in particular offered employers tax credits for renewable energy projects, and after the bill passed in 2022, the state secured commitments from Toyota, Boviet Solar, Kempower, Natron Energy, and Epsilon Advanced Materials among others.
Every few months, it seemed, North Carolina would celebrate more “green” energy jobs news. It now seems to be a different sector’s moment.
Wolfspeed bankruptcy watch
They’re going to do it. After months of speculation, the Durham semiconductor supplier Wolfspeed said it will file for bankruptcy in a prepackaged deal that will eliminate about $4.6 billion in debt. Wolfspeed says enough key creditors support the plan to proceed.
“We have decided to take this strategic step because we believe it will put Wolfspeed in the best position possible for the future,” Wolfspeed’s CEO said in a statement Sunday.
Under the proposal, Wolfspeed creditors will become the new owners — with current shareholders getting a much smaller equity slice of the reorganized company. Wolfspeed intends to emerge from Chapter 11 by the end of September having shredded 70% of its debt.
By then, the future of the large Triangle employer should become clearer. For now, Wolfspeed said it will meet all its client and vendor commitments. That’s little comfort to the retail investors who’ve seen the stock plummet from $120 to 50 cents.
Wolfspeed will lose its spot on the S&P SmallCap 600. Replacing it is another Triangle company: the new technology firm Ralliant, which earlier this year spun off from the industrial conglomerate Fortive. Ralliant will be headquartered in Raleigh.
When will Raleigh get self-driving cars?
This week in autonomous cars: Tesla debuted its robotaxis for select passengers in Austin while Waymo, a self-driving service owned by Google’s parent company, began rides in Atlanta.
Georgia marks the easternmost state Waymo has entered. Could the company come to North Carolina next? Waymo and the city of Raleigh had a conversation about 18 months ago, city spokesperson Julia Milstead told The N&O in an email Thursday.
“It was very preliminary,” she said. “Nothing since then.”
Self-driving car companies have flirted with Raleigh before. In August 2023, General Motors-owned Cruise crisscrossed the city (in human-led cars) for about a week to do initial testing. GM has since shuttered Cruise.
Clearing my cache
- A California startup unicorn named BuildOps picked Raleigh over Austin for its third corporate office. The construction tech firm promises to create 291 jobs downtown.
With the North Carolina House and Senate at a budget impasse, legislators have proposed smaller mini-budgets to fund more pressing needs, including up to $450 million over the next several years for the promised 14,500-worker JetZero plant at the Greensboro airport. But even this mini-budget isn’t likely to pass soon.
- The Federal Trade Commission sent Fortnite players (or their parents/guardians) more than $120 million in refunds stemming from a 2022 settlement with Cary’s Epic Games over unintended purchases. Fortnite customers can still apply for payments.
- Wake County Public Schools System discussed its first artificial intelligence policy. Read it here.
- Kroger announced it will close around 60 stores over the next year-and-a-half, including a Harris Teeter location in Raleigh.
- The French multinational Schneider Electric opened a new robotics center in Raleigh, part of the company’s $700 million spending commitment in the United States.
National Tech Happenings
- The dating app Bumble will lay off 240 employees, or roughly 30% of its global staff.
- Nvidia is back to being the world’s most valuable company, with a market cap exceeding $3.5 trillion. And the chipmaker continues to post jobs in Durham.
- The Trump Organization removed language online about its new Trump Mobile cellphone being “Made in the USA.”
Thanks for reading!
This story was originally published June 27, 2025 at 10:24 AM with the headline "With a wind change in Washington, NC wants bigger piece of the defense pie."
