Anduril Industries

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  In 2019, Bloomberg News gave Anduril Industries a label that few startups would want: "Tech's Most Controversial Startup." The American company was only two years old. It had been cofounded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, the creator of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Anduril sells artificial intelligence and robotics to the U.S. Department of Defense.

  The founders wanted a defense company that behaved like a Silicon Valley startup. That raises odd questions. Why did a group of tech investors decide the defense industry needed an outsider? How does a young company win trust from governments that have spent decades with the same suppliers? What does it build, and who pays? And why does its very name draw complaints?

  12141961

• 2. Retreat on Sonora Island

  ›

  In June 2014, Palmer Luckey attended a retreat on Sonora Island, British Columbia. The host was Founders Fund, an early investor in Oculus. There Luckey met Trae Stephens, who was 30 and had recently left Palantir after being persuaded by Peter Thiel, the leader of Founders Fund.

  The two men discovered a shared interest. Both wanted defense contracts for companies built like tech startups. Stephens thought it absurd that almost no venture-backed firms worked closely with a government holding billions of dollars to spend. Palantir and SpaceX were the exceptions, and Founders Fund had backed SpaceX early. Stephens hoped to fund a third company to join them, but found that hard to do in Silicon Valley.

  After the 2016 presidential election, Stephens was appointed to the Defense transition team. He later joined the Defense Innovation Board, a central part of a reform effort led by Ashton Carter, defense secretary under President Barack Obama. Some of his Palantir colleagues had already floated the idea of a software startup for high-technology military uses.

  Luckey brought money and a reason to move on. He had sold Oculus VR to Facebook in 2014 for 2 billion dollars. In March 2017 he left Facebook and said he had been fired for his pro-Trump beliefs. Facebook denies that claim.

  Luckey expected the new venture to be easy because, as he put it, "the defense industry has been stagnant for decades." He and Stephens recruited staff from Palantir and Oculus. Their plan was to repeat the method behind the Oculus headset, which paired low-cost hardware components with sophisticated software.

  Anduril was incorporated on the 20th of April 2017 and seeded by Founders Fund, with Brian Singerman leading a seed round. At least four founders stood behind it: Stephens, Luckey, Matt Grimm and Joe Chen. Luckey, Stephens and Grimm then pitched the idea to the directors of Palantir. One of them, Brian Schimpf, decided to join. He became the fifth cofounder and the chief executive. The investor pitch deck they carried held one product idea that would soon matter a great deal.

  41514142

• 3. Perimeter Security on a Pole

  ›

  The pitch deck shown to Anduril's first investors included a line reading "perimeter security on a pole." Stephens imagined it guarding forward operating bases. Luckey thought it could secure a border. In June 2017, company executives contacted a Department of Homeland Security office in California, which introduced them to border-patrol agents.

  The government had chased this dream for decades. It spent 429 million dollars on two unsuccessful development programs from 1997 to 2005. In September 2006, Boeing won the SBinet contract, estimated at 7.6 billion dollars, for a border system that began with the goal of creating a wall. It was rolled out along the Arizona border, but expansion halted. Cost overruns and missed deadlines followed, and the program was canceled in 2011 after more than 1 billion dollars had been spent. Part of the fault lay in a one-size-fits-all approach that ignored local needs.

  Anduril built a prototype quickly. Schimpf and other employees took it to a test range. They trained its software on open-source machine learning datasets so it could tell humans from other objects. To image distant targets, Luckey proposed an off-the-shelf infrared laser taken from a hair removal device. It would light a scene much like a camera flash, and it cost less than a thermal camera.

  Stephens then called Will Hurd, a U.S. representative from Texas, who helped arrange an informal test of three towers on ranch land near the border in early 2018. Within 10 weeks of installation, the towers had led to 55 arrests and the seizure of 982 pounds of marijuana. An official test outside San Diego produced 10 interceptions in 12 days.

  The finished Sentry Tower stands 33 feet tall and runs on solar power. It carries a camera, communications antennae, radar and thermal imaging, and it operates autonomously. Disassembled, it fits in a pickup truck. Reports say it can be rebuilt in under an hour, while Customs and Border Protection says agents can set one up in under 2 hours. Its small footprint eased land-use problems. Israeli contractor Elbit Systems had built camera towers, but they were considered more expensive and less mobile.

  Customs and Border Protection began in early 2018 with four towers in San Diego County. By June 2020 it had 60 in operation. In 2019 it opened a pilot program in Montana and Vermont for a cold-weather variant. In July 2020 the agency signed a five-year, 25 million dollar contract, and in September it paid another 36 million dollars. It planned to install 200 towers by 2022. By 2023, 290 stood along the border with Mexico.

  On the 15th of July 2019, the U.S. Marine Corps signed a 13.5 million dollar contract for towers and software at four bases. They were Smedley D. Butler in Okinawa, Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in Arizona, and Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan. In July 2020, a Homeland Security contract to expand the virtual border wall program, including Anduril towers, was worth up to 250 million dollars overall. Supporters call the system a virtual or smart wall, cheaper and more sustainable than a fixed barrier. A companion sensor called Dust weighs 4 pounds and watches narrow corridors that towers cannot see. It runs for two months on its battery or indefinitely with a solar panel.

  The model crossed the Atlantic. In June 2019, the UK Royal Navy bought Lattice, Anduril's software, as part of a modernization effort, and the company also signed a contract with the Royal Marines. From the 22nd of June 2022 to the 22nd of June 2025, the British Home Office held a contract worth 16,087,370 pounds, later renewed at 21,086,291 pounds. At least ten Maritime Sentry Towers, each 5.5 meters tall, now stand between Hastings and Ramsgate. Every tower, in every country, feeds the same piece of software.

  2022931732

• 4. Lattice at the Core

  ›

  In September 2020, at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Anduril simulated shooting down Russian cruise missiles. The exercise belonged to the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System program. Lattice took in data from Air Force systems and missile detection towers, then tracked possible missiles and alerted users. It drew a map of the area inside an Oculus virtual reality headset. A user could tag a missile as hostile, and Lattice would offer possible responses.

  Lattice is software that uses artificial intelligence to classify objects by fusing data from many different sensors, whether they belong to Anduril or to other makers. It sits at the center of the company's other products. Military clients can reach it from a laptop or a phone.

  The Air Force program it served is meant to connect data from "jets, drones, ships and soldiers." That is hard because systems rarely speak the same language. The F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters, for example, were designed with incompatible tactical datalinks. The program is one piece of the Pentagon's Joint All-Domain Command and Control effort, which aims to put every military asset on one data-sharing infrastructure. In 2020, Anduril was one of more than 50 companies chosen to help develop it, under a contract worth up to 950 million dollars.

  In October 2020, Google began blending Google Cloud technology with Anduril systems to support the artificial intelligence work of the Customs and Border Protection innovation team. In 2024, the U.S. Space Force selected Lattice for its surveillance networks. Anduril has also worked with OpenAI on defenses meant to protect military personnel from drone threats.

  On the 11th of February 2025, Anduril took over development and production of the Integrated Visual Augmentation System from Microsoft. The Army had planned to order as many as 121,000 of the goggles, but said they first had to pass high-stress combat tests later that year.

  9216252624

• 5. Machines of Many Kinds

  ›

  Anvil, the quadcopter interceptor, was conceived over a single weekend. The idea was a drone that could spot a hostile object and ram it. The team sent the Pentagon a video of a working prototype, and the U.S. military placed a small order for testing. Anduril announced the drone in October 2019. It finds targets with computer vision and reportedly reaches 200 miles per hour. A detonating version, the Anvil-M, appeared in October 2023.

  Ghost 4, announced in September 2020, takes a different path. It is a single-rotor helicopter drone, a design chosen because it is quieter and carries more than a multirotor. It measures 2.725 meters when assembled and collapses to 1.07 meters to fit in a backpack. Anduril claims a flight time of up to 100 minutes and a 35-pound payload. Its Nvidia processors, originally made for self-driving cars, analyze imagery on board, so the drone can work in radio silence. In September 2024, the U.S. Army selected a newer model, Ghost X, with a 75-minute flight time and a range of 25 kilometers.

  Roadrunner, revealed in December 2023, sits somewhere between a drone and a reusable missile, according to company officials. The 6-foot craft takes off and lands vertically from a container. Anduril said it had spent two years in development and was about to begin low-rate production for "hundreds of units." A single unit costs "in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars." Its name comes from its rival, the Coyote Block 2 made by RTX Corporation, a nod to the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons.

  Fury is a stealthy, subsonic drone with a 17-foot wingspan. Its first design came from Blue Force Technologies, and Anduril modified it heavily. In April 2024 it was chosen alongside a General Atomics entry to compete in the first stage of the Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. The Anduril aircraft, the YFQ-44A, made its maiden flight on the 31st of October 2025. Its rival, the YFQ-42A, had flown in August 2025.

  Beneath the sea, Ghost Shark is an extra-large autonomous submarine. In May 2022, Anduril contracted with the Royal Australian Navy to build three prototypes over three years. On the 31st of October 2025, it opened a Ghost Shark factory in Sydney. The first extra-large vehicle was delivered to the Navy in November 2025, ahead of schedule. It can carry "dozens" of small Copperhead-100 vehicles, which are comparable in size to a Mark 54 lightweight torpedo. In September 2023, engineers tested a live warhead on the Altius-700M, and the company called the result "accurate and effective against the chosen target."

  6465808195

• 6. Venture Money

  ›

  In September 2019, Anduril secured 120 million in funding from firms including Founders Fund, General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz. That valued the company at over 1 billion, a four-fold jump from 2018. In July 2020 came another 200 million dollars, and a valuation of 2 billion dollars. Annual revenue was then estimated at 100 million dollars. The Post reported only about 28 million dollars in unclassified contracts, a small amount by defense standards.

  In June 2021, a Series D round raised 450 million dollars, led by Elad Gil. It doubled the July 2020 valuation to 4.6 billion dollars. In August 2024, a Series F round raised 1.5 billion dollars, led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital, at a valuation of 14 billion dollars. The money was meant to build manufacturing facilities for autonomous weapons. In March 2026, Anduril was reported to be raising 4 billion dollars at a 60 billion dollar valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital.

  This funding model is unusual, because most defense firms do not rely on venture capital. Wired reported that Anduril builds products for potential military markets before the Pentagon asks for them. It uses commercial technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality to iterate faster. The company says its goal is to modernize the militaries of the U.S. and its allies against strategic adversaries, including Russia and China.

  Acquisitions have helped it grow. In April 2021, Anduril bought Area-I, an Atlanta drone maker founded by Georgia Institute of Technology researchers. Copious Imaging followed in September 2021, and Boston-based Dive Technologies in February 2022. In June 2023, it acquired the rocket engine company Adranos, gaining solid rocket motor technology. Blue Force Technologies, a North Carolina aircraft developer, came in September 2023. Later purchases included the radar and command businesses of Numerica in December 2024, Klas in July 2025, American Infrared Solutions in October 2025, and ExoAnalytic Solutions in March 2026.

  Staffing grew in step. In June 2019, Anduril had around 90 employees. By February 2021 it had around 400. In 2024, it was reported to have hired more than 1,000 people over nine months.

  28382110048

• 7. Campus and Arsenal

  ›

  Anduril's headquarters sits in Costa Mesa, California, with satellite offices in Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, Washington, D.C., London and Sydney. The company chose Orange County for its closeness to military bases and its distance from Silicon Valley, which has been warier of military work. According to Grimm, now the chief operating officer, the work needs people in the same room. Products require industrial equipment, classified contracts demand security, and clients expect in-person demonstrations. The company also runs a testing range near Camp Pendleton.

  In July 2018, Anduril leased a 155,000 square foot building beside John Wayne Airport. In February 2021, it leased a 640,000 square foot campus in Costa Mesa. The company calls it The Press, because its first occupant, starting in 1968, was the Orange County bureau and printing press of the Los Angeles Times. The site has a rail line and a gas station, which the company plans to turn into a company park and a coffee shop. A 190,000 square foot western expansion is meant to hold research and development labs and a parking garage, at an expected cost of 200 million. It was the largest lease in Costa Mesa's history and the largest in Orange County since 2006.

  In January 2025, Anduril announced a series of Arsenal Projects, hyperscale factories for autonomous weapons. The first, Arsenal-1, rises at Rickenbacker International Airport in Pickaway County, Ohio, with a planned investment of 1 billion dollars. It is designed to produce advanced systems faster than rival nations. Ohio State University is a close partner. Anduril sponsors the football program for the 2025-26 year, and many of the site's employees come from the university's applied science programs.

  Overseas, a partner is already lined up. In November 2025, Anduril and the Emirati weapons company Edge Group formed the Edge-Anduril Production Alliance, focused on autonomous weapons systems.

  165846

• 8. Flame of the West

  ›

  The name Anduril belongs to the sword of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. In Quenya, the constructed language of the novels, it means "Flame of the West." Critics argue that a weapons maker should not borrow it, because J. R. R. Tolkien was notoriously opposed to war. Many have described the choice as in poor taste.

  The objections run deeper than the name. The ACLU and other human rights and immigration activists say the border towers push migrants toward ever more dangerous routes and normalize surveillance near the border. The Migrants Rights Network and other activists have raised similar criticism of the British Home Office's maritime towers. In 2017, Anduril helped provide data and analysis to Representative Hurd for the "Secure Miles with All Resources and Technology Act," a bill to fund border surveillance equipment.

  On the 12th of July 2024, the Chinese government sanctioned Anduril and its executives over arms sales involving Taiwan.

  The company answers with candor. Its chairman says Anduril is upfront about its weapons work, unlike tech companies that play down military ties. Its engineers are described as "openly interested" in supporting the U.S. military, and the mission is stated "unapologetically." Peter Thiel has argued that tech companies should work with the U.S. government and less with its rivals, since the country is behind in deploying new technology.

  Luckey said in 2019 that he trusts the U.S. government and military to obey their ethical guidelines. Whether that trust holds will be tested at Arsenal-1 in Ohio, where the company plans to build weapons at far greater scale.

  1134403310