Anduril Industries, a counter-drone company founded by executives from Oculus and Palantir, successfully raised $200 million in a Series C funding round. The Silicon-Valley based defense startup is now valued at $1.9 billion. The company is set to become one of the biggest national defense contractors in America. The new funding poured in from venture capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Moreover, Anduril has been providing border security along the Mexican border with its portable surveillance tower, Sentry also known as the ‘virtual wall’, and fully autonomous drones.
Anduril Industries to expand operations
Anduril has been closely working with the US government and its allies, the Northern Command, Royal Marines, and the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Additionally, the company is headed by a team that has previously worked at Oculus, Palantir, General Atomics, SpaceX, Tesla, and Google. Anduril majorly works to provide national security through AI systems, UAS, machine learning, and sensor fusion. Its Lattice platform is an AI-powered software ‘that uses computer vision, machine learning, and mesh networking to fuse real-time data into a single, autonomous operating picture.’
Anduril Industries has two sUAS to deal with different types of drone and ground-based threats. Since the drone invasion on Saudi’s oil plant, the US government has taken extra measures to secure its borders from similar threats. Anduril’s Ghost sUAS is a fully autonomous object detection and navigational VTOL multi-operational (surveillance, reconnaissance, defense, etc.) drone. Thus, It’s extreme endurance and integration with the Lattice platform allows a single operator to command a swarm of Ghosts.
The second sUAS is called Anvil. It is a robust anti-drone UAS that identifies rogue drone threats and knocks them out of the sky. The Anvil is also integrated with the Lattice platform. It intercepts drone threats and provides visual feedback. Once authorized by an operator, using its speed and guidance system, it delivers a strong kinetic strike to the rogue drone while minimizing collateral damage.
Brian Schimpf, CEO of Anduril Industries, said that the funding will help scale the developmental efforts of the company. Moreover, it will enable the startup to be more fast-paced rather than wait for defense contracts. Also, the financial input will help Anduril self-fund its R&D instead of being dependent on government funding.
