Palmer Luckey’s defense-tech company, Anduril, is in the middle of a multibillion-dollar funding round led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. This new funding round would come less than a year after the company’s Series G, which closed in June with $2.5 billion against a $30 billion valuation. Lux Capital and Founders Fund are also expected to participate. Previous reports indicated the new round could bring as much as $8 billion of capital into the company.
This round comes at an awkward moment for defense startups. After a contract dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon, the U.S. government is in the process of canceling all its contracts with the AI company. Secretary of Defense Hegseth has threatened to designate the company as a supply-chain risk.
While not explicitly endorsing the supply-chain-risk designation, Luckey has vocally supported the government’s stance. In a recent social media post, Luckey wrote that you have to believe that our imperfect constitutional republic is still good enough to run a country without outsourcing the real levers of power to billionaires and corporations and their shadow advisors.