The U.S. Army announced late Friday that it has signed a 10-year contract with defense technology startup Anduril. The deal could ultimately be worth up to $20 billion.
According to the announcement, the contract begins with a five-year base period, with an option to extend for an additional five years. It includes Anduril hardware, software, infrastructure, and services. The Army described the agreement as a single enterprise contract that consolidates what had previously been more than 120 separate procurement actions for Anduril’s commercial solutions.
“The modern battlefield is increasingly defined by software,” said Gabe Chiulli, the chief technology officer at the Department of Defense’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, in a statement. “To maintain our advantage, we must be able to acquire and deploy software capabilities with speed and efficiency.”
Anduril was co-founded by Palmer Luckey, who was previously known for selling his virtual reality startup Oculus to Facebook, now Meta. Facebook later fired Luckey after controversy erupted following a news report that he had donated to a pro-Trump political group. Luckey has repeatedly insisted that the media misrepresented his political views.
According to a recent feature in The New York Times, Luckey and Anduril have been embraced by the second Trump administration, thanks to his vision for remaking the U.S. military with autonomous fighter jets, drones, submarines, and more. The company, named for a magical object in “The Lord of the Rings,” brought in around $2 billion in revenue last year, the report states.
Separate reports suggest that Anduril is in talks to raise a new funding round at a valuation of $60 billion.
This announcement also comes as the Department of Defense is locked in a dispute with the AI company Anthropic, which is suing the DoD over its designation as a supply chain threat following a failed contract negotiation. Meanwhile, OpenAI has faced consumer backlash and at least one executive departure after signing a Pentagon deal of its own.