Anduril Industries is quickly becoming a big name in weapons of war, which are in high demand because of the Russia-Ukraine war and Middle East conflicts.

It has been a warp-speed transformation for Anduril’s 32-year-old co-founder, Palmer Luckey. Less than a decade ago, he was designing virtual reality gaming headsets.

The company, which is headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, has manufacturing plants in Ohio, Mississippi, and Rhode Island.

Anduril became the third supplier of solid rocket motors, “addressing a critical bottleneck in missile production as global conflicts drive up demand,” Reuters reported last month.

Until Anduril’s emergence, only L3Harris Technologies and Northrop Grumman made SRMs in the U.S.

In addition, the company says it’s using a bladeless high-speed mixer and a custom aluminum-lithium fuel blend that can improve missile range by up to 40%. The U.S. Army recently chose Anduril to come up with a 4.75-inch SRM for long-range precision artillery.

Anduril is well known for its autonomous drones, border surveillance systems, and AI-powered defense systems — all used by the U.S. military.

13th Most Valuable Private Company in the World

Now, it is a financial powerhouse. In June, following a $2.5 billion funding round, Fortune reported that Anduril’s valuation was nearly $31 billion. CB Insights ranks the company as the 13th most valuable privately held firm in the world.

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund contributed $1 billion in that phase. Thiel, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, is best known as the co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, and an early investor in Facebook.

Ties to President Donald Trump

Thiel is also a Republican mega-donor, and JD Vance, a former Thiel employee, now serves as vice president of the United States.

Bloomberg reported in March of this year that “more than a dozen people with ties to Thiel — including current and former employees of his companies, as well as people who have helped manage his fortune or benefitted from his investments and charitable giving — have been folded into the Trump administration.”

Reported Fortune on June 5: “In the last few years, Anduril has been awarded a number of highly-competitive contracts for the U.S. military, including a program with General Atomics to build up to $9 billion worth of autonomous unmanned aircraft, as well as a 10-year, $642.2 million contract with the U.S. Navy to build counter-drone systems. Earlier this year, Anduril took over Microsoft’s augmented reality headset project, worth up to $22 billion, that will deliver some 120,000 headsets to the U.S. Army. Anduril reported it had doubled its revenue in 2024 to $1 billion.”

Anduril’s Palmer Luckey

Luckey reportedly named the company after Aragorn’s sword, also called the Flame of the West, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Before starting Anduril with Trae Stephens, Luckey founded Oculus VR and designed the Oculus Rift using a Kickstarter campaign. The virtual reality head-mounted display is credited with re-invigorating the virtual reality industry.

Luckey also has been a Trump supporter. He famously was allegedly fired from Facebook for supporting Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign and later negotiated a $100 million payout from the company. Facebook has stood fast behind its statement that the parting of ways had nothing to do with politics.

In 2019, Bloomberg called Anduril “Tech’s Most Controversial Startup” and reported on its “Drone-Killing Robots.”