[7] Luckey met Trae Stephens, 30, who had recently been persuaded to leave Palantir and join Founders Fund by its leader, Peter Thiel.

[7] Luckey and Stephens discovered a shared interest in seeking defense contracts for companies built like tech startups.

[8] "Stephens found it ridiculous that almost no venture-backed companies worked closely with the government; with its billions of dollars to spend", aside from Palantir and SpaceX.

[9] Stephens, who was also looking for a defense startup Founders Fund could invest in, began to recruit employees for Anduril alongside Luckey, who was looking to make use of the money he obtained from selling Oculus VR to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion.

[16] In 2019, advocacy group Mijente reported a $13.5 million Marine Corps contract to install Anduril systems at military bases in Japan and the United States, including one that abuts the U.S.-Mexico border.

[22] In 2020, Anduril was one of more than 50 companies selected by the U.S. Air Force to help develop the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) [13] under a contract worth up to $950 million.

[23][24] In February 2021, The Times reported that the Royal Marines had been testing Anduril's Ghost drone to provide video of targets for frontline use.

It was founded by aerospace researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and was funded largely through government contracts including SBIR.

[33] In April 2024, the U.S. Army Defense Innovation Unit selected Anduril to develop a software framework, for robotic combat vehicle payloads.

[51] Dive-LD is an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) designed by Boston-based Dive Technologies, which was acquired by Anduril in February 2022.

[53] In May 2022, Anduril announced that the Royal Australian Navy signed a $100M contract to develop and build three Extra Large Autonomous Undersea Vehicles (XL-AUVs).

Fury was selected alongside General Atomics to compete for the first increment of the U.S. Air Force's Collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) program in April 2024.

[c] Ghost can perform multiple roles due to its five modular payload bays,[60] such as utilizing laser weapons or detecting and tracking cruise missiles.

[60] Multiple Ghosts can reportedly link up, using a conventional rule-based system to form a 'swarm', to relay data amongst themselves to increase effective range to a Lattice station.

[60] Users of previous Ghost iterations include the United States Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection.

Anduril contracted with the Royal Australian Navy and the Defence Science and Technology Group in May 2022 to produce three prototypes over three years.

While specific technical details remain undisclosed, the project emphasizes rapid development and scalability for potential large-scale production.

[66][16] Anduril demonstrated Lattice in a September 2020 exercise, simulating shooting down Russian cruise missiles in the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, as part of the United States Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) program, which aims to reduce response time delays after initial data acquisition.

[67][68][69][70][71] Anduril revealed the Roadrunner in December 2023, saying that it had been in development for two years, and that they were about to begin low-rate production for an order of "hundreds of units" from a U.S. customer.

A single unit costs "in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars" but the price is expected to drop as volumes increase.

[77] Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems had developed camera towers, but its equipment was considered more expensive and less mobile than Anduril's.

While Stephens was interested in developing the product for forward operating bases, Luckey thought it could be useable as border security.

Anduril discovered it could cheaply repurpose the laser, which it bought in bulk, originally meant for a 600-watt cosmetic hair-removal device.

[7] Stephens called U.S. representative Will Hurd (R-TX),[79] who helped arrange an informal test of three towers in early 2018 on ranch land near the border.

[7] The vehicle was developed in Oakland, California by special effects expert and former MythBusters co-host Jamie Hyneman, who subcontracted to Anduril.

[84] ABMS is part of Pentagon's Joint All-Domain Command & Control (JADC2), which aims to network all military assets[13] into a single data-sharing infrastructure.

The Army planned to order as many as 121,000 of the devices but said the goggles had to pass high-stress operational combat tests later in the year before full production would occur.

[5] Anduril has a stated goal of helping to modernize the militaries of US and its allies, in the face of "strategic adversaries", including Russia and China.

[78] Anduril is headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, with satellite offices in Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, Washington, D.C., London, and Sydney.

The company must use industrial equipment to build their products, has security requirements for classified contracts, and supplies in-person demonstrations for potential clients.