Protection firm Anduril, which builds autonomous drones, digital actuality headsets, and different AI-powered applied sciences for the U.S. navy and its allies, mentioned it had closed an oversubscribed $2.5 billion funding spherical on Thursday.
The brand new funding spherical, which has greater than doubled the corporate’s valuation to $30.5 billion, was led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, which invested $1 billion within the spherical—the fund’s largest verify ever, in response to the agency.
The fundraise marks an vital milestone for the protection tech business, which has swelled in measurement because the Division of Protection embraces enterprise capital-funded startups in an effort to provide its forces with the most recent, cutting-edge applied sciences as world tensions rise. With the brand new valuation, Anduril is among the 13 most respected personal firms on the planet, in response to CB Insights, and it’s beginning to method the market worth of a number of the established protection contractors which have dominated the business for many years—recognized inside the protection business because the “primes.” Anduril’s valuation is now approaching half that of Northrop Grumman and Normal Dynamics, two of America’s longest-standing contractors for the Division of Protection.
Anduril—began in 2017 by a bunch of Silicon Valley vets that embrace Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and Founders Fund’s Trae Stephens—was one of many first protection tech startups in Silicon Valley. Its founders sought to disrupt the normal mannequin of protection by privatizing the innovation course of through self-funding new applied sciences, then promoting to the federal government, slightly than counting on tax-payer {dollars} for the analysis and growth.
As geopolitical tensions have grown across the globe, there was renewed vigor to bolster the U.S. Navy, Military, and Air Pressure’s tools and fleets. In the previous few years, Anduril has been awarded quite a lot of highly-competitive contracts for the U.S. navy, together with a program with Normal Atomics to construct as much as $9 billion price of autonomous unmanned plane, in addition to a 10-year, $642.2 million contract with the U.S. Navy to construct counter-drone methods. Earlier this 12 months, Anduril took over Microsoft’s augmented actuality headset undertaking, price as much as $22 billion, that can ship some 120,000 headsets to the U.S. Military. Anduril mentioned it had doubled its income in 2024 to $1 billion.
Anduril has additionally looped different tech firms into the fold. Final week the corporate mentioned it was partnering with Meta on a separate helmet and headset undertaking.
Anduril says it is going to use the brand new billions of capital for M&A, to scale up its Arsenal-1 manufacturing facility in Ohio, rent within the U.S., Australia and Europe, and spend money on new product launches.
Anduril, which had simply raised $1.5 billion final summer season at a $14 billion valuation, has helped flip the protection tech business into one of many hotter sectors within the enterprise capital business. There was $3 billion invested in protection tech startups in 2024, in response to Crunchbase, up 11% from the 12 months prior. Sassie Duggleby, cofounder and CEO of reusable hypersonic know-how firm Venus Aerospace, mentioned in an e-mail that Anduril was “revolutionizing the traditional defense contracting process” and that it was “paving the way for emerging deep tech aerospace innovators like Venus.”
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
