Anduril is quickly becoming one of the most important companies in American defense tech. And now, they are building a new type of missile.
What’s happening:
- Defense tech company Anduril has announced the launch of their new line of cruise missiles known as the Barracuda-100, Barracuda-250 and the Barracuda-500
Why it matters:
- The new cruise missiles being built by Anduril are aiming to help the United States military have access to larger stockpiles of missiles, which can be mass produced without specialized tools and manufactured domestically to reduce dependence on foreign countries
- The new line of Barracuda missiles are designed with an extreme focus on simplicity in order to enable hyper-scaling in production capabilities and eliminate the need for highly trained human labour
By the numbers:
- Anduril’s new line of Barracuda missiles take 50% less time to produce than traditional missiles and require 95% fewer tools
- Anduril recently raised $1.5B USD in a Series F financing round to rapidly expand their production capabilities, which was co-led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Sands Capital
- Their newest manufacturing facility which is known as Arsenal-1 will span more than 5M square feet and produce tens of thousands of autonomous military systems annually
Going deeper:
- Anduril is co-founded by Palmer Luckey, who previously started virtual reality company Oculus which was sold to Meta (NASDAQ: META) in a multi-billion dollar deal
- Defense tech has been seeing major new inflows of capital recently, with prominent Silicon Valley venture capital funds such as a16z and Sequoia Capital beginning to back multiple new startups building everything from autonomously operating firearms to domestic combat drone manufacturing
The intrigue:
- Y Combinator also recently invested in a defense tech startup for the first time ever, who is focused on making cheaper cruise missiles for the United States military
