Anduril, a military start-up of artificial intelligence, has been set to complete a new financing round that would double the value of the company to $ 28 billion, according to four people who are familiar with the negotiations.
The financing round, which is led by Founders Fund and has not yet been closed, achieves up to $ 2.5 billion, the people said. Founders Fund alone is planning to invest $ 1 billion, the largest check ever written by the company, two of the people said.
Anduril designs and builds autonomous systems and weapons for the military and other government agencies, including flying drones, rockets, underwater ships and monitoring equipment for monitoring both national borders and the battlefield. It is one of a new wave of companies that build systems based on AI technologies for the government.
Founders Fund, started by the entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel, has supported Anduril since the start in 2017, and one of the co-founders of Anduril, Trae Stephens, is a partner at the company. Mr Thiel, who was also co-founder of Palantir, a military technology company, has long been a backer of Republican candidates, including President Trump in 2016 and the Run of JD Vance for Senate in 2022.
Six months ago, Anduril raised $ 1.5 billion with a rating of $ 14 billion.
Founders Fund refused to comment. CNBC reported details about the financing interviews for the first time.
The latest inflow of cash comes when start-ups of defense technology are overbelly about their prospects. Enthusiasm for building technology for the US Army has grown in recent years in Silicon Valley, a reversal of more than a decade of taking those contracts. In 2018, thousands of employees at Google signed a letter that protested against the company's military contracts.
That resistance has slowly shifted, as more risk capital companies pour money in the sector.
Mr. Trump is expected to continue investments in the Turbo allowance. Palmer Luckey, the founder of Anduril, has supported the president since his 2016 campaign. He donated Mr Trump's campaigns in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections and organized fundraisers.
In the night of the presidential election in November, Mr Luckey placed a meme in honor of Mr Trump's victory. Elon Musk, the technical director and a close adviser of the president, replied and said that it was “very important to open Dod/Intel for entrepreneurial companies such as yours.”
In January, Mr Luckey and Anduril announced plans to build a $ 1 billion factory in Ohio that they said they would eventually produce tens of thousands of autonomous systems and weapons every year.
