Anduril Industries

Investor meetups created the Oculus Rift, one of the first consumer virtual reality headsets. In June 2014, Palmer Luckey, the creator of the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, attended a retreat on Sonora Island, British Columbia, hosted by Founders Fund, an early Oculus investor. Luckey met Trae Stephens, 30, who had recently been persuaded to leave Palantir and join Founders Fund by its leader, Peter Thiel. "Stephens found it ridiculous that almost no venture-backed companies worked closely with the government; with its billions of dollars to spend", aside from Palantir and SpaceX. Founders Fund was also an early SpaceX investor. "Stephens' goal was to fund a company to join that duo", but found it difficult to accomplish in Silicon Valley. After the 2016 presidential election, Stephens was appointed to the Defense transition team and later joined the Defense Innovation Board, a central part of a reform effort spearheaded by Ashton Carter, defense secretary under President Barack Obama. Stephens and Luckey recruited employees from Palantir and Oculus, and planned to employ Luckey's developmental approach with the Oculus headset to combine low-cost hardware components with sophisticated software. Luckey thought this would be easy because, he said, "the defense industry has been stagnant for decades". and seeded by Founders Fund. In June 2019, the UK Royal Navy purchased Lattice as part of a modernization initiative. Anduril also signed a contract with the Royal Marines. In 2019, more towers were installed in CBP's San Diego sector. CBP ordered more for Texas, and started a pilot program at Montana and Vermont border sites for a cold-weather variant. In September, Anduril received another $36M from CBP for surveillance towers. CBP planned to install 200 towers by 2022. In October, Google began integrating Google Cloud technology with Anduril technology to help AI implementations by CBP's Innovation Team. In 2020, Anduril was one of more than 50 companies selected by the U.S. Air Force to help develop the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) In February 2021, The Times reported that the Royal Marines had been testing Anduril's Ghost drone to provide video of targets for frontline use. In April, Anduril acquired Area-I, a company producing drones capable of being launched from larger aircraft. Area-I had previously contracted for U.S. government agencies, including the Army, Air Force, Navy, and NASA. Area-I was an Atlanta-based technology startup which developed surveillance drones for government clients. It was founded by aerospace researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and was funded largely through government contracts, including SBIR. In June, Anduril announced in Series D funding from Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Lux Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and D1 Capital Partners. This increased their valuation to $4.6bn, double that of July 2020. The funding round was led by investor and entrepreneur Elad Gil. Between 22nd June 2022 to 22nd June 2025 the Home Office had a contract with Anduril titled ‘CCTC – Common Operating Picture and Command Interface (COPCI)’, valued at £16,087,370. As of the contract's renewal, it is valued at £21,086,291. As part of this contract, at least ten Anduril Maritime Sentry Towers, 5.5 meter tall towers fitted with radar as well as thermal and electro-optical imaging sensors have been identified between Hastings and Ramsgate. In September 2023, Anduril engineers tested a live warhead on the Altius-700M. Anduril said that the "system was accurate and effective against the chosen target". In January 2024, Anduril was one of five vendors contracted by the US Air Force for the development of collaborative combat aircraft. In April 2024, the U.S. Army Defense Innovation Unit selected Anduril to develop a software framework, for robotic combat vehicle payloads. In August Anduril raised  billion in series F funding led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital, valuing the company at $14bn. The proceeds were to establish manufacturing facilities for autonomous weapons systems. On July 12, 2024, Anduril and its executives were sanctioned by the Chinese government due to arms sales over Taiwan. In January 2025, Anduril Industries announced plans to build a $1 billion manufacturing facility in Pickaway County, Ohio to produce weapons systems, including aerial and maritime drones equipped with its Lattice software. The Lattice platform had been selected by the U.S. Space Force in 2024 for use in surveillance networks. Anduril has also collaborated with OpenAI to enhance defence systems designed to protect military personnel from drone threats. In March 2026, Anduril was reported to raise a $4 billion round at a $60 billion valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital. In November 2025, Anduril and Emirati weapons company Edge Group formed the "Edge–Anduril Production Alliance", focused on autonomous weapons systems. Acquisitions Anduril has grown, in part, through various acquisitions of other companies developing products for the US Government: • April 2021: Anduril acquired drone developer Area-I. • September 2021: Anduril acquired Copious Imaging. • February 2022: Anduril acquired Dive Technologies. • June 2023: Anduril acquired rocket engine company Adranos, giving the company access to technology for developing solid rocket motors for missiles and space launch. • September 2023: Anduril acquired North Carolina-based autonomous aircraft developer, Blue Force Technologies, which was developing what would become Anduril's Fury entry into the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. • December 2024: Anduril acquired the radar and C2 businesses of Numerica. • July 2025: Anduril acquired communications systems company Klas. • October 2025: Anduril acquired American Infrared Solutions. • March 2026: Anduril acquired space intelligence company ExoAnalytic Solutions. == Products ==

Altius The Anduril Altius (Agile Launched, Tactically-Integrated Unmanned System) is a series of fixed-wing, tube-launched unmanned aerial vehicles developed by Area-I, an Atlanta-based subsidiary that Anduril acquired in April 2021. Altius 600 accepts a modular payload on the nose. It can be launched from different launchers and platforms, including C-130 aircraft, UH-60 Blackhawks, and various ground vehicles, as well as larger UAVs, including the MQ-1C Grey Eagle and Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie stealth UCAV. Anvil Anvil, also known as Interceptor, is an unmanned combat aerial vehicle quadcopter designed principally to attack other unmanned aerial vehicles. After launch, Anvil locates target drones using computer vision, As of 2019, Anduril had delivered the Anvil to the United States and United Kingdom militaries. Anduril was contracted to deploy the drone to overseas combat zones. Barracuda Barracuda is a family of air-breathing cruise missiles, usually launched from fixed-wing aircraft, naval platforms and helicopters. The family consist of three variants - Barracuda-100 with range less than 160km while carrying a 16-kg warhead, Barracuda-250 with maximum range of 280 to 370km with 16-kg warhead, Barracuda-500 with a strike range of 800km with warhead of 45-kg. Bolt/Bolt-M Bolt is a UAV that comes in military and civilian configurations. M stands for "munitions". The products operate on the Lattice AI network. They can be carried in a backpack and can be deployed in five minutes. It includes swappable batteries for extending flight time. Its primary purpose is intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and search and rescue (SAR). It has both remote and autonomous flight modes. Flight time is 45 minutes. Range is . The operator can specify a target, and an attack angle, and then let the drone operate autonomously without further intervention. Bolt-M carries up to a ordnance payload. It supports both anti-personnel or anti-materiel warheads. The additional weight reduces flight time to 40 minutes. Copperhead-100 is roughly comparable in size and capability to the Mark 54 lightweight torpedo, while Copperhead-500 is roughly comparable in size and capability to the Mark 48 heavy torpedo. Both systems are intended to be reusable and recoverable. It is intended for use in littoral and deep-water survey, inspection, and ISR. In May 2022, Anduril announced that the Royal Australian Navy signed a $100M contract to develop and build three Extra Large Autonomous Undersea Vehicles (XL-AUVs). Dive-LD is capable of carrying and deploying the Copperhead family of UUVs and Copperhead-M family of loitering munitions. Fury Fury is a long-range, subsonic, stealthy military drone with wingspan suited for surveillance and combat. The initial prototype design was originally made by Blue Force Technologies. Fury was selected alongside General Atomics to compete for the first increment of the U.S. Air Force's Collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) program in April 2024. Anduril significantly modified the Blue Force design for the competition. The Anduril-developed YFQ-44A "Collaborative Combat Drone" is semi-autonomous, and slated to work in concert with a broad range of US military assets. The maiden flight of the YFQ-44A took place on October 31, 2025; its competitor in the US DoD competition, the General Atomics YFQ-42A, made its maiden flight in August 2025. Ghost Ghost is an unmanned aerial vehicle. The name signals its reportedly quiet acoustic signature and ability to avoid detection. Ghost 4 was announced in September 2020.--> Anduril claims a maximum flight time of 100 minutes, a cruise speed of , a payload capacity, and a charge time of 35 minutes. The drone can be remotely or autonomously piloted. Ghost Shark (XL-AUV) Ghost Shark is an autonomous submarine developed by Anduril Industries. Anduril contracted with the Royal Australian Navy and the Defence Science and Technology Group in May 2022 to produce three prototypes over three years. The submarine is known as the XL-AUV outside of Australia. On 31 October 2025, Anduril opened a Ghost Shark manufacturing facility in Sydney, with the first production vehicle completing assembly ahead of schedule and cleared for sea acceptance testing. The first Ghost Shark extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle was delivered to the Royal Australian Navy in November 2025, ahead of schedule. Prototype testing was underway as of April 2024, with Anduril officials reporting that the vehicle had already spent significant time at sea. It is the core of all other Anduril products. Lattice has been used to control Anduril equipment for national border and military base surveillance. Anduril demonstrated Lattice in a September 2020 exercise, simulating shooting down Russian cruise missiles in the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, as part of the United States Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) program, which aims to reduce response time delays after initial data acquisition. Anduril revealed the Roadrunner in December 2023, saying that it had been in development for two years, and that they were about to begin low-rate production for an order of "hundreds of units" from a U.S. customer. A single unit costs "in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars" but the price is expected to drop as volumes increase. The name came from its competitor, RTX Corporation's Coyote Block 2, in reference to the Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner cartoon characters. solar-powered portable surveillance tower. The tower operates autonomously, When disassembled, Sentry can fit into a pickup truck, and reportedly can be re-assembled in under an hour. or "smart wall". The DHS SBinet program started in the mid-2000s with the goal of creating a border wall. Boeing won the contract in September 2006 for an estimated $7.6B. who helped arrange an informal test of three towers in early 2018 on ranch land near the border. • In July 2020, CBP paid $25M for surveillance towers. In September 2020, Anduril received $36M from CBP for Sentry Towers. Sentry (firefighting vehicle) Sentry was proposed as an autonomous firefighting vehicle, which would repurpose an armored personnel carrier to carry water. The vehicle was developed in Oakland, California by special effects expert and former MythBusters co-host Jamie Hyneman, who subcontracted to Anduril. == Military programs ==

Advanced Battle Management System / Joint All-Domain Command & Control ABMS is a digital architecture battlefield management system, designed to connect data across a variety of sources and weapons, including "jets, drones, ships and soldiers" The task is difficult due to the lack of data interoperability. For example, the F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters were designed with incompatible tactical datalinks. Project Maven Project Maven is an initiative that started in 2018 intended to adapt AI for military purposes. == Headquarters ==

Anduril is headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, with satellite offices in Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, Washington, D.C., London, and Sydney. The company chose to base itself in Irvine due to its proximity to military bases and to stay away from Silicon Valley, which has been more cautious about working for the military. In February 2021, Anduril leased a campus in Costa Mesa, California. It is called "The Press" by the company, after its original occupant, the Orange County bureau and printing press of the Los Angeles Times, starting in 1968. The Press hosts a rail line and a gas station, destined to become a company park and coffee shop, respectively. The complex is . A westward expansion is intended as Anduril's research and development hub and a parking garage. Two floors will be added inside part of the existing complex. The redesign/expansion was expected to cost . Anduril planned to occupy its Costa Mesa location in 2022. The lease was the largest by size in Costa Mesa's history and the largest in Orange County's since 2006. == Autonomous weapons facilities ==

Arsenal Project In January 2025, Anduril announced a series of Arsenal Projects, hyperscaling computer facilities for autonomous weapons. This facility will be designed to be able to manufacture advanced systems faster than near peer manufacturers. The facility is noted for its close ties with Ohio State University, with Anduril Industries sponsoring the football program for the 2025 to 2026 year, close ties to the college administration, and many of Anduril-1's employees hailing from its applied science programs. == Corporate affairs ==

Development ethos Luckey aims to replicate a high-tech startup in the traditionally slower-paced defense industry. Employment In June 2019, Anduril had around 90 employees. By February 2021, around 400 employees were at its headquarters and satellite offices. == Criticism and controversies ==

In 2019, Anduril was called "Tech's Most Controversial Startup". Similarly, the U.K. Home Office's use of Anduril's maritime sentry towers has been criticized by the Migrants Rights Network and other immigration activists. Anduril Industries is named for Andúril, the fictional sword of Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings. The use of this name for a company specialized in the production of weapons has caused some criticism, since the author J. R. R. Tolkien was notoriously opposed to war. The use of a reference to his novels in their naming has been described by many as in poor taste. == Notes ==