Anduril Industries Inc., a defense tech startup, has raised $1.48 billion in a huge Series E funding round. Notably, Anduril’s latest fundraise is the second largest funding of the year after the $1.72 billion investment that SpaceX Corp. closed in May, this year.
Valued at $8.48B
Previously, the company raised $450 million in Series D funding last year. With this round, the company reached a valuation of $8.48 billion, almost double its previous valuation. Also, the total investment it has raised accounts for $1.9 billion.
The round was led by Valor Equity Partners (that backed Bird, Stoik, and Kyte), joined by over a dozen other investors, including Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed Ventures.
Anduril appears to have made some solid inroads in its strategy to both develop and scale autonomous software and other capabilities for military use. The new funding will enable Anduril to accelerate research and development to bring new, cutting-edge, autonomous defence capabilities to the market and continue to mature and scale its current business lines with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. allies and partners.
Brainchild of Oculus founder Palmer Luckey!
Anduril was founded by Oculus (acquired by Meta) founder Palmer Luckey in 2017 in California. He is the designer of the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality head-mounted display.
Later, in 2017, Palmer Luckey left Facebook(now Meta), and stopped his involvement with Oculus VR. He later hired an employment lawyer and together negotiated a payout of at least $100 million, arguing that the Mark Zuckerberg-led tech giant had violated California law.
Last month, the man who created the Oculus Rift invented a virtual reality headset that will explode the forebrain of a user who dies in a video game.
The killer headset looks like a Meta Quest Pro hooked up with three explosive charge modules that sit above the screen. The charges are aimed directly at the user’s forebrain and, should they go off, would obliterate the head of the user.
Anduril: defence tech disruption
In the meantime, he founded Anduril; a defence technology company focused on autonomous drones and sensors for military applications. The company develops defence systems for the U.S. and allied nations. Its products reportedly range from surveillance towers to drones. It builds AI and commercially developed technologies into its hardware platforms for defence missions.
It also sells a software platform, called Lattice, that can collect sensor data from multiple defence systems and make it available to military personnel through a centralised interface. Lattice is an open operating system for a defence that brings autonomy to the toughest missions.
It enables men and women in uniform to move with machine speed, and military-grade security by turning data into information, information into decisions, and decisions into actions across tactical and strategic operations.
