Palmer Luckey has come a long way since creating virtual reality headsets in a garage. Today, the Oculus VR founder’s defense technology startup, Andurilannounced it has raised $1.5 billion and is developing a new manufacturing platform to produce “tens of thousands of autonomous weapons” a year.
The funding round, led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital, could help seven-year-old Anduril transition from a flashy defense industry startup to a more serious U.S. defense contractor.
It also reflects a shift in military thinking, as policymakers adjust to the prospect of battlefields ruled not just by tanks and fighter jets but also by drones and artificial intelligence, and look for ways to boost America’s ability to produce military hardware to match that of a potential adversary like China.
Anduril is also betting that it can leverage the tech industry’s lean, efficient manufacturing approach to create a new way to produce weapons systems at scale. The company says it has developed an artificial intelligence-powered manufacturing platform, called Arsenal, to speed up production of its growing arsenal of drones and other equipment.
Greg AllenAn expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he says the Pentagon is getting more serious about working with nontraditional defense contractors and investing in small, cheap, autonomous systems. “The stars are aligning in terms of[the Defense Department]changing its approach, new companies appearing with a different approach, and the venture capital community finally being willing to risk large sums of money to change things,” he says.
Anduril says Arsenal will follow the kind of approach used in high-tech manufacturing by companies like Apple and Tesla. That means designing products with manufacturing in mind and using software to monitor and optimize manufacturing operations. The company says it will also rely on a more resilient supply chain because it will source components primarily from the United States or allied countries.
The company says it will invest several hundred million dollars to build the first such factory, the sleek Arsenal-1, at an undisclosed location. Anduril has already increased its manufacturing capacity in recent years, with a factory in Mississippi to build solid rocket motors and another in Rhode Island to produce drones.
Representation of the planned Arsenal-1 factory in Anduril.Anduril