Anduril Industries

Anduril Industries doubled revenue to $1 billion in 2024 (138% growth from $420 million in 2023) while raising $2.5 billion at $30.5 billion valuation (June 2025)—the largest venture check ever written by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund ($1 billion). The company secured $6+ billion in government contracts by end-2025, including U.S. Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program (autonomous Fury fighter jets, beating Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman), $642 million Navy counter-drone contract, and $22 billion Microsoft HoloLens takeover for Army augmented reality headsets (120,000 units). January 2025 announcement of Arsenal-1, a $1 billion, 5-million-square-foot autonomous weapons manufacturing facility in Ohio (4,000+ jobs, production starting July 2026), signals metabolic transition from R&D organism to industrial producer. This is costly signaling at biological scale: building excess capacity before demand materializes to demonstrate survival fitness to allies and enemies simultaneously.

Peacock tails don't help peacocks escape predators—they hinder escape. The ornament signals underlying genetic quality: only healthy males afford metabolically expensive plumage. Arsenal-1 broadcasts identical message: "We can burn $1 billion on infrastructure during peace because our revenue growth supports wartime scaling." Traditional defense primes (Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop) operate cost-plus contracts: bill government for expenses plus margin, minimize capital risk. Anduril self-funded Fury development, Lattice AI software, Anvil counter-drone systems before securing contracts—reversing 70 years of procurement dynamics. This inverted model only works if technology development cycles are shorter than government acquisition timelines. Software-defined hardware (Lattice OS controlling heterogeneous drone fleets) allows rapid iteration impossible with F-35-style platforms requiring decade-long certification.

The evolutionary arms race accelerated in 2024-2025: Ukraine conflict demonstrated loitering munitions, AI-targeting, and drone swarms shifting battlefield economics from million-dollar missiles to thousand-dollar quadcopters. Anduril's Roadrunner (reusable drone interceptor) and Fury (autonomous loyal wingman) address this metabolic mismatch—$100,000 interceptors versus $5 million Patriot missiles, pilot-optional fighters versus $100 million F-35s. Palmer Luckey (Oculus founder, $5 billion net worth) positioned Anduril as "Silicon Valley speeds meeting defense industrial base durability," recruiting talent from SpaceX, Palantir, and Tesla rather than incumbent contractors. The company expects to burn $800-900 million in 2025 funding major programs—negative cash flow during hypergrowth mirrors mammalian gestation: metabolic investment in future fitness, not current survival. October 2025 U.S. Army contract (modernized counter-drone fire control, replacing Northrop Grumman's FAAD C2) confirmed Anduril can now displace incumbents in production programs, not just R&D pilots. The organism graduated from proof-of-concept to ecosystem keystone. Defense budgets worldwide total $2.4+ trillion annually (2024); Anduril captured 0.04%. The runway for growth exceeds the company's metabolic capacity to scale, which is precisely why Arsenal-1 exists—build digestive system before food arrives.