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 with defence tech startup Anduril. The woody could beryllium worthy up to $20 billion.

According to the announcement, the declaration starts with a five-year “base period,” with the enactment to widen the woody for an further 5 years, and it includes Anduril hardware, software, infrastructure, and services.

The Army describes the statement arsenic a azygous endeavor declaration 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, the main exertion serviceman astatine the Department of Defense’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, successful a statement. “To support our advantage, we indispensable beryllium capable to get and deploy bundle capabilities with velocity and efficiency,”

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

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

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

This announcement besides comes arsenic the Department of Defense is locked successful a quality with Anthropic, with the AI institution suing the DoD implicit its designation arsenic a proviso concatenation menace pursuing a failed declaration negotiation, portion OpenAI has faced consumer backlash and at slightest 1 enforcement departure aft signing a Pentagon woody of its own.