Dive Brief:
- Defense contracting startup Anduril Industries raised $1.5 billion in a series F funding round earlier this month to scale autonomous weapon system manufacturing.
- The startup plans to spend “hundreds of millions” to build a 5-million-square-foot facility, dubbed Arsenal-1. This plant will use Anduril’s platform software, also called Arsenal, to boost manufacturing of all its defense products, according to the website.
- The funds will also be used to expand hiring, improve processes, upgrade tooling, strengthen its supply chain and expand infrastructure, according to the company’s announcement.
Dive Insight:
Sands Capital and the Peter Thiel-backed Founders Fund led the Series F round, valuing the Anduril at $14 billion, according to the press release. Other new and existing investors include Fidelity Management & Research Co., Counterpoint Global, Baillie Gifford, Altimeter and Franklin Venture Partners.
While Anduril has not selected a site for its first site, it will be located in the U.S., according to the company. There is also the possibility of a second factory in the future, which could be built in one of the U.S.’s allies or partners’ territories.
The Arsenal facility will employ “thousands of people” and will be designed to produce “tens of thousands” of Anduril’s autonomous military systems a year, the company said in an email.
The startup will also bring its workers, capital, machines and materials within the Arsenal facility to meet changes in demand, launch new products or scale production to meet surges in demand indefinitely.
“This is simply not possible when those critical resources are spread out across multiple, distributed geographic areas,” Anduril said in the Aug. 7 press release.
The Arsenal software has been “years in the making,” according to the website. Arsenal is software-defined, meaning it integrates the design, development and mass production stages as one ecosystem from the lab to the factory floor, the company said in an email.
The software also includes resource planning and proprietary manufacturing execution systems to integrate actions such as threat-based operational analysis, modeling, simulation, drawing, testing, bill of material management, work orders, production and data management across the product lifecycle.
“Every engineer and technician involved in our manufacturing process works off of the same common digital interface, making it easier for them to modify existing products, start new products, and shift resources and personnel across production lines,” the company said.
Anduril has been making manufacturing moves in the past year. In October 2023, the defense startup hired Keith Flynn as its first SVP of manufacturing. Flynn oversees operations of over 200 engineers and technicians across the U.S. and Australia.
In June 2023, Anduril acquired solid rocket maker Adranos along with its manufacturing facility in McHenry, Mississippi. A year later, Anduril announced plans to spend $75 million to increase the McHenry plant’s manufacturing and production capacity for solid rocket motors, creating more than 60 jobs.
Anduril also plans to open a new manufacturing facility to support large-scale production of its autonomous underwater vehicles, or autonomous submarines, in Quonset Point, Rhode Island. The new plant will create more than 100 jobs within five years of the facility opening sometime next year as well as produce 200 vehicles per year.
The upcoming Rhode Island facility aims to meet growing demand for Anduril’s defense and commercial customers, including an $18.6 million U.S. Navy contract for autonomous underwater vehicles.
