Palmer Luckey has come a long way from tinkering with virtual reality headsets in his garage. Today, the Oculus VR founder’s defense tech startup, On the sensorannounced that it had raised $1.5 billion and also developed a fresh manufacturing platform that would enable the production of “tens of thousands of autonomous weapons” per year.
The funding round, led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital, could facilitate seven-year-old Anduril transform from a flashy newcomer to a more earnest U.S. defense services provider.
It also reflects a shift in thinking about the military, as policymakers adapt to a vision of battlefields dominated not just by tanks and fighter jets but also by drones and artificial intelligence, and look for ways to boost America’s military hardware production capabilities to match those of a potential adversary like China.
In addition, Anduril is betting it can transform the tech industry’s lean, proficient approach to manufacturing into a fresh way to produce weapons systems at scale. The company says it has developed an AI-powered manufacturing platform, called Arsenal, to speed production of its growing arsenal of drones and other equipment.
Greg Allenexpert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the Pentagon is increasingly earnest about working with unconventional defense contractors and investing in miniature, inexpensive, autonomous systems. “The stars are aligning in terms of [Department of Defense] “Things are changing, new companies are emerging with different approaches, and the venture capital community is finally willing to risk a lot of money to make a difference,” he says.
Anduril says Arsenal will follow the approach taken 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 supply chain that is more resilient, because it will source components primarily from the United States or allied countries.
The company says it will spend several hundred million dollars to build the first such factory, the sleek Arsenal-1, at an undisclosed location. Anduril has already expanded its production capacity in recent years, opening a plant in Mississippi to build solid-fuel rocket engines and another in Rhode Island to make drones.
Visualization of the planned Arsenal-1 factory by Anduril.On the sensor