Palmer Luckey’s defense startup Anduril raises $1.5 billion to make AI-powered weapons

Palmer Luckey has come a long way from hack together virtual reality headset in a garage. Today, the defense tech startup of the founder of Oculus VR, Andurilannounced that it has raised $1.5 billion in addition to developing a new manufacturing platform to produce “tens of thousands of autonomous weapons” per year.

The round, led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital, could help seven-year-old Anduril transition from an upstart in the defense industry to a more serious U.S. defense contractor.

It also reflects a shift in military thinking, as policymakers adapt to a battlefield dominated not just by tanks and fighter jets, but by Unmanned aircraft And artificial intelligenceand they seek to increase the United States’ military hardware production capacity to match potential adversaries like China.

Anduril is also betting that it can turn the lean, efficient technology approach of the manufacturing industry into a new way to produce weapons systems at scale. The company says it has developed an AI-powered manufacturing platform, called Arsenal, to speed up the production of the growing arsenal of drones and other hardware.

Greg Allenan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Pentagon is getting more serious about working with nontraditional defense contractors and investing in small, cheap, and autonomous systems. “The stars are aligning in terms of [Department of Defense] “The approach changes, new companies emerge with different approaches, and the venture capital community is finally willing to risk big money to make a change,” he said.

Anduril said Arsenal will adopt an approach used in high-tech manufacturing by companies like Apple and Tesla, which means designing products with manufacturing in mind and using software to monitor and optimize production. The company said it will also rely on a more resilient supply chain, as it will source components primarily from the United States or allied countries.

The company said it would spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build the first factory of its kind, the sleek Arsenal-1, at an undisclosed location. Anduril has been ramping up its manufacturing capacity in recent years, with a factory in Mississippi to make solid rocket motors and another in Rhode Island to make drones.

Anduril’s planned Arsenal-1 plant drawing.Anduril