Anduril founder Palmer Luckey becomes visibly animated, speaking rapidly when the topic turns to his company’s new recruiting event: the AI Grand Prix. This is a drone-flying contest with a significant twist. Instead of human pilots operating the drones, the drones must fly autonomously. The human participants will be tested on their software-writing skills, creating code that enables their drones to outmaneuver the competition. Prizes include a $500,000 pot to be split among the highest-scoring teams, along with job offers at Anduril and a chance to bypass the company’s standard recruiting cycle.
Luckey explained the event’s origin in an interview. During a meeting about recruitment strategy, someone suggested sponsoring a traditional drone-racing tournament, which aligned somewhat with Anduril’s previous marketing, such as sponsoring a NASCAR Cup Series race. Luckey liked the general idea but challenged the team. He recalled telling them that sponsoring a human-piloted race would miss the point of Anduril, whose entire reason for being is the advancement of autonomy where a person does not need to micromanage each drone. He said what they should really do is sponsor a race about how well programmers and engineers can make a drone fly itself.
After discovering no such event existed, the company decided to create it themselves. Interestingly, Luckey pointed out that teams in the AI Grand Prix will not be flying Anduril’s drones, but those built by another defense tech startup, Neros Technologies. According to Luckey, Anduril’s drones are physically too large for the contained course in Ohio where the finals will be held.
Anduril is partnering with the established Drone Champions League and JobsOhio to operate the event. The final race will take place in Ohio, where Anduril has a key manufacturing facility.
While Luckey is excited about the event, he will not be a competitor. He plans to attend, but emphasized the event is about who can build the best software to pilot the drones. He admitted he is not a very good software programmer, describing himself as more of a hardware, electromechanical, and optical person who knows just enough coding to glue prototypes together. He credits Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf as the company’s lead software brains.
The founder hopes for at least fifty teams and has already received interest from multiple universities. If successful, the plan is to expand into races with other types of autonomous vehicles. Luckey shared ideas for future competitions, including underwater AI racing, ground AI racing, and potentially even AI racing of spacecraft.
The contest is open to all international entrants, excluding teams from Russia. Luckey stated the difference with Russia is that the country is actively engaged in invading Europe. The concern is that people qualified for such a race may also work for their nation’s military. He added that while he would love to include everyone, they are not the Olympics, and noted the event is following the lead of the World Cup, which has also excluded Russia.
Notably, teams from China, a hub for autonomous engineering, are welcome. This is interesting given that China is often named as a primary concern by U.S. autonomous weapons analysts. Should a Chinese team win, the prize of a job at Anduril, which makes weapons for the U.S. military, would not be automatic. Luckey said that if someone works for the Chinese military, they would not be allowed to get a job at Anduril due to applicable laws. There will still be interviews and a qualification process for all job candidates.
The competition will take place across three qualifying rounds beginning in April, with the final Grand Prix race scheduled for November.