Anduril, the defense technology company co-founded by Palmer Luckey, plans to build its first major manufacturing plant, a 5 million square foot facility known as “Arsenal-1,” in Arizona, Ohio or in Texas, according to a close source. with the case.
The company, which develops autonomous drones, aircraft and submarines, had announced $1.5 billion at a post-money valuation of $14 billion in September.
Alongside this round, Anduril announced plans to use the new capital for manufacturing, investing “hundreds of millions” to expand its Arsenal-1 factory. He also said he would use the money to hire and promised the facility would employ “thousands of people” and be capable of producing “tens of thousands of autonomous military systems per year.”
When TechCrunch asked an Anduril spokesperson if the company was now choosing between these three locations for its factory, it responded “that’s incorrect,” but did not specify what exactly was incorrect.
Earlier this year, the US Air Force selected Anduril to develop and test small unmanned combat aircraft. The company beat out Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for the deal, a significant victory for the seven-year-old venture capital-backed company. (A surveillance aircraft company, General Atomics, was also selected to modernize the Air Force fleet.)
Anduril currently manufactures its systems in Georgia, Mississippi, Rhode Island and Australia, according to its website. While these sites provide the company with “significant manufacturing capacity,” Anduril wants the new facility to become a prototype for a faster, cheaper, software-defined factory for weapons manufacturing capable of increasing the production quickly and with agility.
This contrasts with the type of custom manufacturing typical of defense and aerospace contractors today, which makes changing out each part costly. Anduril isn’t the only venture-backed defense technology company working on the manufacturing side of the problem. As TechCrunch previously reported, a group of former Anduril engineers launched a startup called Salient Motion, to do this for the aerospace industry and were promptly sued by Anduril. The lawsuit has since been settled. Others, like Ursa Major, are working on manufacturing rocket engines using 3D printing.
Although Anduril’s headquarters is in Costa Mesa, California, and will remain there, according to our source, the majority of the company’s staff will likely be based at Arsenal-1. Arizona, Texas, and Ohio are all pretty logical potential choices, as all are states where defense contractors and other types of manufacturing facilities abound.
Investors in Anduril’s latest round include Founders Fund, Sands Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company and Baillie Gifford.