Anduril Industries (Anduril)
Canvas Category OEM : Defense
The next generation of military technology will depend less on advances in shipbuilding and aircraft design than on advances in software engineering and computing. Unlike traditional defense contractors who focus primarily on hardware, Anduril’s core system is Lattice OS, an autonomous sensemaking and command & control platform that serves as the core platform for our suite of capabilities.
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Palmer Luckey Is Bringing Anduril Smarts to Microsoft’s Military Headset
While known primarily for drones and air defenses, Anduril’s core offering is Lattice, a suite of software that powers those tools and a platform that can integrate with third-party systems. With today’s announcement, Lattice will be implemented in the Integrated Visual Augmentation System headset. Developed by Microsoft for the US military in 2021 and based on the company’s Hololens system, IVAS is an augmented-reality display that blends virtual information with a user’s view of the real world.
While virtual and augmented reality headsets remain a tough sell for the general public, Luckey says the US Army has been eager to experiment with the technology, primarily as a training tool but also as a way to deliver information more efficiently in critical situations. “The military is different,” Luckey says. “If you have an augmented-reality display that can make you 20 percent more lethal or make someone 10 percent safer, that’s a bigger improvement than just about any piece of gear you could give you.”
Anduril Raises $1.5 Billion to Rebuild the Arsenal of Democracy
Anduril Industries announced it has secured $1.5 billion of funding for its Series F round to hyperscale defense manufacturing. This funding will enable Anduril to increase hiring, enhance processes, upgrade tooling, increase resiliency in its supply chain and expand infrastructure. Anduril is also investing in Arsenal, the manufacturing platform for modern warfare. With Arsenal, Anduril’s goal is to manufacture and produce tens of thousands of autonomous weapons systems addressing the urgent needs of the United States and our allies.
Co-led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital, Anduril’s Series F values the company at $14 billion and includes new investors Fidelity Management & Research Company, Counterpoint Global, and Baillie Gifford, as well as major commitments from existing investors including Altimeter and Franklin Venture Partners.
Rheinmetall and Anduril join forces to develop C-sUAS system
The Düsseldorf-based technology group Rheinmetall and Anduril Industries signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) during Eurosatory in Paris, one of the world’s leading trade shows for defence and security. Under this collaboration, Rheinmetall and Anduril will work together to design, develop, and produce new layered Counter small Unmanned Aerial System (C-sUAS) air defense systems. The scope of this collaboration is primarily to address European markets first.
These C-sUAS systems will combine Rheinmetall’s command and control system, Skymaster, and high-power guns with Lattice and open, modular and scalable hardware components including Anduril’s Sentry Tower, Wisp sensors and Anvil, its autonomous interceptor. By combining the unique capabilities of both companies, an unmatched layered solution for C-sUAS will be offered. Overall, the MoU aims to bring together the complementary skills of these two leading companies.
Founders Fund leads financing of composites startup Layup Parts
Scarcely five months after its founding, hard tech startup Layup Parts has landed a $9 million round of financing led by Founders Fund to transform composites manufacturing. Lux Capital and Haystack also participated. Eakin, Layup’s CEO, would still be with Anduril, he says, if not for the idea to found Layup. “It was born out of a need that we had at Anduril — a need that the world has that became poignant during my time there,” he said.
Most areas of manufacturing have changed over the course of Eakin’s career, except composites, he said. Companies like Protolabs, Xometry and Fictiv have innovated processes like CNC-machining, sheet metal cutting and injection molding. These companies (and many others) have developed a frictionless, almost Amazon-like experience to getting hardware manufactured rapidly, and that’s left a permanent mark on the industry.
But there’s been no equivalent innovation in composite parts manufacturing. There are a few reasons for this, Eakin said. The first is that existing composites manufacturers aren’t well leveraged to develop the software tools required to do it well; the other is that composites are more artisanal and less easily automatable in certain steps of the process. So bringing the number of humans in the manufacturing loop close to zero is inherently more tricky.
Army Selects Anduril and Palantir to Deliver TITAN Deep Sensing Capability for Long Range Fires
Anduril Industries announced that the company is part of the team selected by the Army to develop and manufacture the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) ground station system, the Army’s next-generation deep-sensing capability. The industry-defining team, led by Palantir Technologies, is made up of the nation’s leading traditional and non-traditional contractors. Under the partnership, Anduril will spearhead hardware design, development, and scaled manufacturing across 10 TITAN vehicles.
During the previous Competitive Prototyping Phase, Anduril spearheaded the design and manufacturing of a full working prototype vehicle. That prototype underwent rigorous testing during a five-month evaluation period to assess the system’s technical performance and usability across a series of test events replicating relevant operational scenarios. Those soldier touchpoints involved a combination of manned, overhead, and ground based ISR platforms spanning joint service technologies, validating system performance in fusing sensor data from disparate sources at the tactical edge.
How Anduril Is Fueling VC's Push Into Defense Tech
Anduril led a $6 million investment in military parts manufacturer Senra Systems, which hasn’t been previously reported.
Anduril Industries Acquires Blue Force Technologies
Defense technology company Anduril Industries announced its acquisition of Blue Force Technologies, a developer of autonomous aircraft with an integrated aerostructures division serving a wide range of defense and commercial customers. This transaction will expand Anduril’s existing autonomous fleet to now include large high performance, group 5 aircraft and significantly increases Anduril’s reach and impact within the Department of Defense. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Blue Force Technologies designs and manufactures high-end composite aircraft and their components at its factories in North Carolina. Blue Force Technologies has been developing Fury, a group 5 autonomous air vehicle with fighter-like performance since 2019. Fury leverages proprietary rapid prototyping, digital engineering and an open architecture that is designed to deliver next-generation flight performance with the flexibility to integrate heterogenous sensors and payloads to support air dominance missions.
🤝 Anduril Industries and Hadrian Announce Strategic Partnership
Defense technology company Anduril Industries and Hadrian, a leader in advanced manufacturing, have announced a strategic partnership in which Hadrian will supply and manufacture precision parts for Anduril’s suite of autonomous systems.
Through the Anduril-Hadrian strategic partnership, Anduril will accelerate its production of key components and precision parts at scale, leveraging Hadrian’s proprietary design excellence and manufacturing competencies to reduce cost and lead time. Hadrian’s automated, software-first approach will provide Anduril with higher flexibility and improved scalability not seen with traditional defense manufacturing.
Anduril Raises $1.48 Billion in Series E Funding
Defense technology company Anduril Industries today announced $1.48 billion in Series E funding, valuing the company at $8.48 billion, nearly doubling the company’s previous valuation in June 2021. The new funding will enable Anduril to accelerate research and development to bring new, cutting edge, autonomous defense capabilities to the market and continue to mature and scale its current business lines with the US Department of Defense as well as US allies and partners.
The problems US and allied militaries are facing are fundamentally software problems. To continue to enable the US, allies and partners to deter adversaries, Anduril is building software-defined and hardware-enabled capabilities that solve mission needs with autonomy, today. Autonomous systems will enable the military to operate faster and at greater scale across both tactical and strategic operations.
Anduril and the Royal Australian Navy to Partner on Extra Large Autonomous Undersea Vehicles
Defence technology company Anduril Industries and the Australian Defence Force are entering into commercial negotiations for a US$100m co-funded design, development and manufacturing program for Extra Large Autonomous Undersea Vehicles (XL-AUVs) for the Royal Australian Navy.
The XL-AUV will be an affordable, autonomous, long endurance, multi-mission capable AUV. It is modular, customizable and can be optimized with a variety of payloads for a wide range of military and non-military missions such as advanced intelligence, infrastructure inspection, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting. Anduril’s approach to development of the XL-AUV will deliver the vehicle at a fraction of the cost of existing undersea capabilities in radically lower timeframes.
ANDURIL INDUSTRIES ACQUIRES SOLID ROCKET MOTOR MANUFACTURER ADRANOS
Anduril Industries, a defense technology company, and Adranos, a manufacturer of solid rocket motors, have announced the completion of Anduril’s acquisition of Adranos. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Through this acquisition, Anduril will become a merchant supplier of solid rocket motors to prime contractors delivering missiles, hypersonics and other propulsion systems for some of the Department of Defense’s most important programs. Anduril’s entrance to the market as a supplier will bring more resources and competition to an industry facing heavy consolidation, expand the industrial supply base, and provide increased velocity for development and production of solid rocket motors, which are critical to replenishing allied stockpiles of munitions and maintaining credible deterrence.
Anduril will bring critical resources toward developing the Adranos Solid Rocket Complex production facility in Mississippi into a modern manufacturing facility, which will increase output of both standard and ALITEC solid rocket motors to thousands per year at much faster lead times than currently available.
The DoD Should Pilot a New Category of Software Data Rights
This post presents a simple proposition, the Department of Defense (DoD) should run a pilot program to test a new category of data rights designed specifically for software projects, in the mold of its software color-of-money pilot which it ran last year. It should run this pilot specifically with the aim of encouraging the commercial software industry to adapt its proprietary commercial technology to field AI and autonomy for military missions. It should gauge whether the pilot is successful by measuring outcomes—costs, vendor-lock, deployment speed, and so on—against current approaches. And it should use those outcomes to make permanent changes to the current outdated data rights regime, which the Executive Branch specifically identified as an area of concern in a report last week.
Anduril Industries Acquires Dive Technologies
Defense technology company Anduril Industries today announced it has acquired Boston-based start-up Dive Technologies, a pioneer in autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). This acquisition expands Anduril’s suite of autonomous systems, extends its unmanned capabilities to the undersea domain, and significantly accelerates the company’s strategic growth.
Dive Technologies enables safe and successful access to the greatest depths of the world’s oceans with reliable, flexible AUVs. Their industry-leading DIVE-LD is a modular and customizable AUV that can be optimized for a variety of defense and commercial mission types such as long-range oceanographic sensing, undersea battlespace awareness, mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, seabed mapping and infrastructure health monitoring.
Anduril Raises $450 Million in Series D Funding
Defense technology company Anduril Industries today announced $450 million in Series D funding and a post-money valuation of $4.6 billion, more than double the company’s previous valuation in July 2020.
Anduril’s Lattice AI software platform, hardware products, and people are currently in the field actively supporting operations with the Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the UK Ministry of Defence, as well as other agencies. Lattice uses computer vision, machine learning, and mesh networking to fuse real-time sensor data to create a single, autonomous operating picture and command and control platform. Lattice ties together Anduril’s family of site security solutions deployed along the southwest border to provide situational awareness, and on military bases in the U.S. and abroad to autonomously detect, track, and interdict intrusions by people, drones, and other vehicles. Lattice is also the operating system that enables Anduril’s autonomous unmanned aircraft, such as the new Ghost 4 sUAS, to perform their missions.