New York, May 23, 2026, 10:02 ET
- Hyliion finished Friday at $5.99, up 42.6%. The stock hit $6.24 during the session before settling back. After-hours quotes showed Hyliion at $5.93.
- Hyliion shares jumped after the company said its USX-1 Defiant unmanned ship was chosen as a possible test bed for KARNO sea trials.
- U.S. equity markets are closed for the weekend and aren’t open Monday due to Memorial Day.
Hyliion Holdings Corp. shares jumped Friday. The small-cap power developer drew attention after a U.S. Navy-related sea-trial plan brought its KARNO technology back into the spotlight, making it one of the week’s active market movers.
Shares finished the session at $5.99, gaining 42.6% on the day as volume reached around 20.0 million shares. That compares with Thursday’s $4.20 close and $4.67 at the close on May 15. Shares are still up about 28% for the week after a slow start on Monday.
Hyliion is betting that moving into modular power generation will mean it can land business with military and data-center buyers. The company’s KARNO Core is a heat-powered linear generator, which converts heat to electricity. Hyliion said it has an 800-kilowatt shipboard system coming, based on four 200-kilowatt cores, geared for the USX-1 Defiant sea-trial program.
Friday’s jump was well ahead of the rest of the market. Major U.S. indexes closed higher going into the holiday weekend, but gains were modest: the S&P 500 up 0.37%, the Dow higher by 0.58% and the Nasdaq 100 adding 0.42%, per Trefis.
Hyliion said the Navy’s Office of Naval Research has picked the USX-1 Defiant as a possible test vessel with DARPA. CEO Thomas Healy called the Defiant a “fundamental shift” in naval platforms and said unmanned ships need power systems that are “efficient, resilient” and run without humans. Hyliion
Hyliion’s Q1 report pulled in more investor attention. The company posted $2.8 million in first-quarter revenue, four times what it made in Q4. Hyliion stuck to its $10 million revenue forecast for 2026 and finished March holding $139.3 million in cash and investments. CEO Healy called the quarter “tangible progress,” adding that “execution” will be the focus for the rest of the year. Business Wire
Hyliion is looking to military contracts as its next test. The company said it sees $40 million to $50 million in extra U.S. military work in 2026, with about $20 million in Office of Naval Research contracts already underway, pending standard government contracting. On a May 13 earnings call, Northland’s Edward Jackson noted “progress towards commercialization” but pressed on timing for those possible deals. CFO Jon Panzer described Q1 as a “really good start to the year.” Investing.com
There is also a data-center angle here. Hyliion said it signed a non-binding letter of intent with VFG Holdings for as many as 250 KARNO Cores—equal to 50 megawatts—over five years. That agreement doesn’t require an actual purchase unless a final deal is reached. The company also said it has close to 750 KARNO Cores under similar non-binding letters of intent with customers in data-center, military and other segments. That would be more than $400 million in possible revenue based on current prices.
Hyliion is entering a busy section of the power sector. Bloom Energy pushes onsite generation for data center operators, and Generac offers backup generators as well as microgrid systems to the same crowd. Onsite power refers to electricity made right where it’s needed, not just drawn from the main grid.
Hyliion shareholders last week picked three board members, approved Grant Thornton as auditor, supported executive pay in a non-binding vote and passed a change to the 2024 equity plan, according to a separate filing. The governance update wasn’t the reason for the stock’s strong move, but it was noted in a week when the stock surged.
The risk for Hyliion is straightforward. The company is still early-stage and has a record of losses. Customer letters of intent aren’t binding orders, and the Navy work could get tripped up by development or procurement problems. Any snag with sea trials, safety signoff, customer deployments, or the 200-kilowatt launch might put Friday’s price jump in question.
U.S. markets are shut Monday for Memorial Day, so trading picks up again Tuesday. This week, attention isn’t on a specific company event. It’s focused instead on whether investors will keep backing signs that KARNO is moving out of the lab and contract jobs and into deployed systems, starting with the Navy. After that, Hyliion’s pitch is that it can deliver for data center and onsite power users, if it executes.
