Anduril Industries

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. Luckey and Stephens discovered a shared interest in seeking defense contracts for companies built like tech startups. "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, the latter of which Founders Fund had been an early investor into. "Stephens' goal was to fund a company to join that duo", but found it difficult to accomplish in Silicon Valley.

In 2015, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security opened Silicon Valley offices. "In 2017, as part of an initiative that had begun the previous year, the Defense Department unveiled the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, known as Project Maven, to harness the latest AI research into battlefield technology, starting with a project to improve image recognition for drones operating in the Middle East."

The idea for a software startup in the realm of high-technology military applications was raised by Stephens and some of his colleagues at Palantir. 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, who was also looking for a defense startup Founders Fund could invest in, began to recruit employees for Anduril alongside Luckey, who was looking to make use of the money he obtained from selling Oculus VR to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion.

Luckey left Facebook in March 2017, alleging he had been fired for his pro-Trump beliefs, which Facebook denies. 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".

Anduril was incorporated in April 20, 2017 and seeded by Founders Fund. …

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, 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, and can be commanded to ram targets by its operator. The drone reportedly can reach speeds of up to 200 mph (320 km/h). Anduril is developing versions to attack larger targets such as helicopters or cruise missiles. Anvil can be integrated into Anduril's Lattice system.

The interceptor was conceptualized over a weekend, as a drone that could identify and ram hostile objects. After sending a video to the Pentagon of a working prototype, the U.S. military made a small order for testing. Anduril publicly announced the drone in October 2019.

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.

A detonating version called the Anvil-M was unveiled in October 2023. It uses a fire-control module and munitions payload to destroy Group 1 and 2 UAS.

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 is a 12 lb (5.4 kg) 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. …

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. ABMS is part of Pentagon's Joint All-Domain Command & Control (JADC2), which aims to network all military assets into a single data-sharing infrastructure.

On February 11, 2025, Anduril took over the development and production of Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) from Microsoft for the U.S. Department of Defense. The Army planned to order as many as 121,000 of the devices but said the goggles had to pass high-stress operational combat tests later in the year before full production would occur.

Project Maven is an initiative that started in 2018 intended to adapt AI for military purposes.

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. According to COO Grimm, Anduril's work requires in-person interaction. The company must use industrial equipment to build their products, has security requirements for classified contracts, and supplies in-person demonstrations for potential clients.

The company operates a testing range near Camp Pendleton.

In July 2018, Anduril leased a 155,000 sq ft (14,400 m) building next to John Wayne Airport, near Irvine. In February 2021, Anduril leased a 640,000 sq ft (59,000 m) 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 450,000 sq ft (42,000 m). A 190,000 sq ft (18,000 m) 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 US$200M. 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.

In January 2025, Anduril announced a series of Arsenal Projects, hyperscaling computer facilities for autonomous weapons.

Anduril announced the construction of a manufacturing facility at Rickenbacker International Airport in Pickaway County, Ohio to be named "Arsenal-1", with subsequent Arsenals planned. 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.