Us Army Announces Contract With Anduril Worth Up To $20b

The U.S. Army said precocious Friday that it has signed a 10-year contract pinch defense tech startup Anduril. The woody could beryllium worthy up to $20 billion.

According to nan announcement, nan statement starts pinch a five-year “base period,” pinch nan action to widen nan woody for an further 5 years, and it includes Anduril hardware, software, infrastructure, and services.

The Army describes nan statement arsenic a azygous endeavor statement consolidating what had been “more than 120 abstracted procurement actions for Anduril’s commercialized solutions.” 

“The modern battlefield is progressively defined by software,” said Gabe Chiulli, nan main exertion serviceman astatine nan Department of Defense’s Office of nan Chief Information Officer, successful a statement. “To support our advantage, we must beryllium capable to get and deploy package capabilities pinch velocity and efficiency,”

Anduril was co-founded by Palmer Luckey, who was antecedently known for trading VR startup Oculus to Facebook (now Meta). Facebook fired Luckey aft contention erupted pursuing a news study that he’d donated to a pro-Trump governmental group.

Luckey has many times insisted that nan media misrepresented his governmental views, but according to a recent characteristic successful The New York Times, Luckey and Anduril person been embraced by nan 2nd Trump administration, acknowledgment to his imagination for remaking nan U.S. subject pinch autonomous combatant jets, drones, submarines, and more. The institution (named, for illustration Palantir, for a magical entity successful “The Lord of nan Rings”) brought successful astir $2 cardinal successful gross past year, nan NYT says.

Separate reports propose that Anduril is successful talks to raise a caller backing round astatine a $60 cardinal valuation. 

This announcement besides comes arsenic nan Department of Defense is locked successful a conflict pinch Anthropic, pinch the AI institution suing nan DoD complete its nickname arsenic a proviso concatenation threat pursuing a grounded statement negotiation, while OpenAI has faced consumer backlash and at slightest 1 executive departure aft signing a Pentagon woody of its own.