Defense technology startup Anduril Industries Inc. today announced that it has raised $1.5 billion in funding to upgrade its manufacturing infrastructure.

The investment was co-led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital. Fidelity Investments, Baillie Gifford and a number of other institutional investors chipped in as well. Anduril is now worth $14 billion, up from $8.5 billion following its last funding round in 2022.

Costa Mesa, California-based Anduril develops equipment for the defense sector. Its product portfolio includes aircraft, a truck equipped with hardware for processing sensor data, a jeep-like vehicle and a range of other systems. Several of Anduril’s machines are designed to operate autonomously.

The company built a software platform called Lattice to power its equipment. According to Anduril, the software automates some of the manual work involved in processing data from defense systems’ sensors. It also provides features that allow a single user to manage multiple autonomous machines such as drones. 

Today’s funding announcement reportedly comes a few months after Anduril received a potentially lucrative contract from the U.S. Air Force. Under the agreement, the company will manufacture prototypes of a miniature autonomous fighter jet. According to TechCrunch, the Air Force could eventually decide to buy several thousand of the jets at a cost of several billion dollars.

Anduril said that it will use its newly raised capital to build a “software-defined manufacturing platform” for producing defense systems. According to Wired, the company hopes to set up enough production lines to make tens of thousands of autonomous systems per year. The effort will reportedly place an emphasis on using software to monitor and improve manufacturing efficiency.

As part of the initiative, Anduril will build a factory dubbed Arsenal-1 at a cost of several hundred million dollars. The facility is expected to boost the company’s manufacturing footprint by more than five million square feet. Once it comes online, the plant will employ over 1,500 workers.

Anduril might also spend some of its new capital on acquisitions. The prototype miniature jet that the company will make for the Air Force is based on technology from Blue Force Technologies, an aerospace manufacturer it acquired last September. Anduril purchased rocket motor maker Adranos a few months earlier. 

The company’s latest funding round comes a few months after Helsing GmbH, a fellow defense technology startup, raised €450 million at a reported valuation of €5 billion. The German company develops artificial intelligence applications for planes. It also provides other software products, including a platform that can automatically analyze and visualize sensor data. 

Photo: Anduril Industries