Anduril Industries

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Anduril Industries develops AI-powered military systems, surveillance technology, and autonomous weapons for U.S. and allied defense and security agencies.

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Anduril Industries is an American defense technology company that designs, builds, and manufactures autonomous weapons, surveillance systems, and military software powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Established in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR and creator of the Oculus Rift, along with former Palantir executives Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm, Brian Schimpf, and Oculus engineer Joe Chen, Anduril has grown in less than a decade into one of the most highly valued private companies in the United States.

Unlike the Big Five defense contractors—Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and Boeing Company—Anduril focuses on autonomous weapons systems that can be manufactured at higher volumes, faster rates, and lower cost. All products are unified under Lattice, the company’s proprietary AI operating system. Company executives have described this approach as “Moneyball military,” after the sabermetric strategy popularized in Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, in which a cash-strapped baseball team competed with wealthier rivals through smarter resource allocation.

All of Anduril’s core products connect to Lattice, an AI-driven command-and-control ecosystem that analyzes data from thousands of sensors and combines it into a single operating picture. Lattice allows its operators and autonomous systems to see, track, and respond to threats in real time.

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Palmer Luckey is an American inventor, founder of Oculus VR, and cofounder of defense technology company Anduril Industries.

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Anduril’s origins can be traced to 2014, following the sale of Oculus VR to Facebook (now Meta Platforms). Following the sale, Palmer Luckey attended a retreat hosted by venture capital firm Founders Fund, one of Oculus’s early investors, on Sonora Island, British Columbia. There he met Trae Stephens, a former Palantir executive and Founders Fund partner who was looking for the next major defense technology start-up.

Over the next few years, the U.S. Department of Defense expanded its outreach to Silicon Valley through initiatives such as the Defense Innovation Unit and Project Maven, which aimed to incorporate artificial intelligence into military surveillance and targeting.

In 2017, following Luckey’s departure from Facebook, he established Anduril with Stephens, Matt Grimm, Joseph Chen, and Brian Schimpf. The company launched with seed funding from Founders Fund. That same year, Anduril pitched its border surveillance technology to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB), leading to a pilot program the following year.

In 2018, Anduril tested three surveillance towers on a private ranch near the U.S.–Mexico border as part of the CPB pilot program. During the 10-week trial, the towers contributed to 55 arrests and the seizure of approximately 982 pounds of marijuana. Based on those results, CPB expanded the program to San Diego and later into Texas. 

The pilot helped establish Anduril’s credibility with government customers. Later that year, the company leased its first major facility, a 155,000-square-foot building in Irvine, California. By 2019, Anduril had begun winning contracts with the U.K.’s Royal Navy and Royal Marines, as well as the U.S. Marine Corps. 

By late 2019, Anduril’s valuation had risen above $1 billion, making it a unicorn less than two years after its founding. Bloomberg Businessweek dubbed the company “Tech’s Most Controversial Startup,” reflecting the debate surrounding its work in AI-powered surveillance and defense technologies.

In 2020, Anduril’s growth accelerated as it expanded beyond border security. CPB awarded the company a five-year contract, Google integrated its cloud technology with Anduril’s surveillance systems, and the U.S. Air Force selected the company for its Advanced Battle Management System, a program valued at up to $950 million. That same year, Anduril publicly demonstrated technology designed to detect and intercept cruise missiles.

By 2021, Anduril had outgrown its Irvine headquarters and leased a 640,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Costa Mesa, California, nicknamed “The Press” because it formerly housed a Los Angeles Times printing plant. Earlier that year, Anduril acquired drone maker Area-I and infrared imaging company Copious Imaging, expanding its capabilities in autonomous aircraft and sensing technologies. By year’s end, the company’s valuation had more than doubled to about $4.6 billion.

In 2022, Anduril expanded into undersea systems with the acquisition of Dive Technologies, whose autonomous underwater vehicles became the basis for its Dive-LD platform. Later that year, the company won a $100 million contract to develop Ghost Shark, a large autonomous submarine for the Royal Australian Navy. By year’s end, Anduril’s valuation had reached about $8.5 billion.

In 2023, Anduril expanded into rocket propulsion with the acquisition of Adranos and strengthened its aircraft capabilities by acquiring Blue Force Technologies, whose designs became the basis for the Fury autonomous fighter aircraft. Later that year, the company introduced Roadrunner, a reusable interceptor designed to destroy hostile drones, along with Anvil-M, another counter-drone system.

Anduril’s growth accelerated in 2024. The U.S. Air Force selected the company for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, aimed at building drone “wingmen” to fly alongside human pilots, and a contract with the U.S. Army’s Defense for robotic combat vehicle software.

In 2025, Anduril announced the Arsenal initiative, a planned $1 billion manufacturing facility in Ohio that some commentators compared to Henry Ford’s assembly line in the early 20th century. That same year, Anduril took over the U.S. Army’s struggling Integrated Visual Augmentation System program from Microsoft (MSFT) while continuing to rely on Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure.

Anduril maintained its growth momentum into 2026, securing a 10-year contract with the U.S. Army valued at up to $20 billion.

Controversies and skepticism are especially deep, divisive, and expected in an industry whose businesses are involved in the manufacturing of munitions. As a producer of AI-driven, autonomous weapons systems, Anduril is particularly exposed to a debate that predates the company itself: whether machines should be permitted to make life-and-death decisions in combat without direct human control.

Anduril’s core business is developing AI-powered surveillance systems and autonomous weapons designed to identify, track, and, in some cases, engage targets. That mission has drawn sustained criticism from those who argue that increasingly autonomous weapons could reduce human accountability in combat, lower the threshold for the use of force, and increase the risk of unintended escalation. 

Anduril’s products and recruiting efforts have prompted protests and criticism from civil liberties groups, immigration advocates, and university students. Among the concerns:

Some defense analysts have also questioned Anduril’s practice of developing and testing military systems much faster than traditional defense contractors, arguing that the approach could increase the risk of technical failures with serious military or geopolitical consequences.

In less than a decade, Anduril grew from a start-up building AI-powered surveillance towers along the U.S.–Mexico border to a global manufacturer of autonomous military systems. Its operational approach, combining rapid product development and a Moneyball-style strategy, enabled it to compete with much larger, more established defense manufacturers. But as AI and autonomous weapons become an increasingly important part of modern warfare, Anduril remains at the center of a broader debate over the ethics, risks, and future of military technology.