How Long Will the Public's Interest in AI Endure?

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Happy Friday, Los Angeles.

Anduril has built autonomous drones, underwater vehicles and fighter aircraft. Its newest product is considerably more familiar.

A laptop.

The Costa Mesa-based defense technology company announced this week that it is partnering with San Diego-based Qualcomm Technologies to launch BlueChip, a new line of computers designed in California and manufactured in the United States.

The first product will be a rugged laptop powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Series platform and built for customers in government, defense, public safety and other critical industries. Anduril has already produced working prototypes and plans to begin accepting orders in 2027.

At first glance, a laptop may seem like a modest addition to a company known for developing autonomous military systems. But BlueChip is less about entering the crowded consumer-electronics market and more about rebuilding the industrial foundation behind the machines Americans use every day.

The United States remains a leader in designing advanced technology, but much of the physical production required to turn those designs into finished computers has moved overseas. That includes not only semiconductor manufacturing, but also circuit boards, displays, batteries, enclosures and the network of specialized suppliers that connects them.

For most consumers, that dependency is largely invisible. For the government and military, it represents a potential vulnerability.

BlueChip is Anduril’s attempt to close that gap.

Components sourced from the United States and allied countries already account for more than 90% of the prototype laptop’s procurement cost. Circuit-board assembly is planned for Anduril’s Arsenal-1 facility in Ohio, while the company develops domestic production capabilities for enclosures, batteries and other hardware.

The goal is to gradually replace remaining foreign dependencies and create an end-to-end American computer supply chain that can support additional products beyond the first laptop.

That process requires more than moving an existing design into an American factory. Anduril is redesigning the computer around what domestic manufacturers can realistically produce at scale. The work includes selecting machinable American metals, adapting power systems to available battery technology and developing a bonding process for domestically made display glass.

In other words, Anduril is not simply assembling a laptop in America. It is working backward through the supply chain to make American assembly possible.

Qualcomm will supply the computing foundation. Its Snapdragon X platform will handle processing, graphics and on-device artificial intelligence, giving BlueChip users the ability to run certain AI models locally rather than sending sensitive information to the cloud.

That is particularly valuable for government and defense customers operating in secure environments, but it also reflects a broader shift in computing. As AI becomes embedded in everyday workflows, the location where information is processed may become nearly as important as the model doing the processing.

The partnership also reinforces Southern California’s growing role in the effort to rebuild American advanced manufacturing.

Anduril remains headquartered in Orange County, but its regional footprint is expanding. The company is investing $1B in a new campus spanning Long Beach and Lakewood that is expected to support approximately 5,500 jobs and include engineering, laboratory and prototype-manufacturing space.

Qualcomm, meanwhile, has spent decades building San Diego into a center for wireless technology and semiconductor design.

BlueChip brings those two Southern California strengths together: Anduril’s ability to move quickly from engineering concept to physical product and Qualcomm’s expertise in efficient, high-performance computing.

The first BlueChip laptop is not intended to compete for space in every backpack or coffee shop. Its early customers will likely be institutions that care deeply about security, reliability and control over their technology supply chains.

But the larger ambition reaches far beyond a single device.

If BlueChip succeeds, Anduril and Qualcomm will have created more than an American-made computer. They will have helped restore the suppliers, production knowledge and technical workforce required to build the next one.

For a company accustomed to tackling difficult national-security problems, the laptop may be one of Anduril’s most practical ideas yet.

Sometimes rebuilding an industry begins with reopening the machine.

More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.

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🔦 Spotlight

Hello, LA.

Somewhere between the streaming service you still use and the free trial you forgot to cancel, recurring payments have become a surprisingly complicated part of modern financial life.

Los Angeles-based ScribeUp believes your bank should help manage them.

The fintech company raised a $13M Series A led by Curql, with participation from Mucker Capital and Service Ventures. The financing includes $10M in equity and a $3M venture debt facility, bringing ScribeUp new capital to expand its team, accelerate sales and further develop its AI-powered bill-management technology.

The product is designed to live directly within the apps of banks, credit unions, fintechs and neobanks. Instead of simply showing customers that a recurring charge occurred, ScribeUp gives them tools to do something about it.

That could mean canceling a forgotten subscription, changing a payment method, accessing an advance or exploring refinancing options for an outside loan, all without leaving the financial institution’s app.

It sounds like a useful feature. It is also part of a much larger contest over who gets to manage the consumer’s financial life.

For years, banks have held customers’ money while third-party apps have increasingly helped them understand and manage it. Budgeting platforms organize spending. Subscription services identify recurring charges. Fintech apps recommend ways to save, borrow or invest.

Now AI assistants are beginning to combine those functions into a single interface capable of not only analyzing financial information, but acting on it.

That creates a risk for traditional financial institutions. If consumers begin turning to an outside app whenever they need to cancel a service, manage a bill or make a financial decision, their bank could become little more than the infrastructure beneath someone else’s customer experience.

ScribeUp offers banks a way to compete without building that technology themselves.

Its platform combines recurring-payment information with the financial context a bank already has, including balances, cash flow and payment timing. That allows a financial institution to do more than flag an upcoming charge. It can potentially recommend and execute an action based on the customer’s broader financial position.

ScribeUp says its technology is already used by more than 60 banks, credit unions, fintechs and neobanks. It can be added through an API, software development kit or embedded interface, allowing institutions to introduce bill-management features without creating the underlying infrastructure from scratch.

The new funding will support more advanced AI capabilities that can take action across different billers. That distinction matters. The first generation of personal finance software helped people see where their money was going. The next generation wants permission to do something about it.

For banks, the opportunity is straightforward: become more useful before another app takes their place.

For consumers, the appeal may be even simpler. Most people do not want another financial dashboard. They want the unwanted charge to stop.

The next battle in banking may not be over who holds your money.

It may be over who gets to press cancel.

More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.

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Hey there, LA.

In Hollywood, every successful story eventually gets a sequel. This one brings Reese Witherspoon back to the company she built.

Five years after selling control of Hello Sunshine in a deal worth more than $900M, Witherspoon is partnering with French production group Mediawan to buy back the Los Angeles media company.

The reported purchase price is in the low-to-mid eight figures, significantly below Hello Sunshine’s valuation when Candle Media acquired a controlling stake in 2021.

That difference tells a larger story than any single Hollywood transaction.

Hello Sunshine was one of the most prominent acquisitions made during the streaming boom, when platforms were spending aggressively and investors placed enormous value on production companies with recognizable founders, established audiences and libraries of intellectual property.

Witherspoon had built all three.

Founded in 2016, Hello Sunshine developed its business around stories centered on women, producing projects including “Big Little Lies,” “The Morning Show,” “Little Fires Everywhere” and “Daisy Jones & The Six.” It also turned Reese’s Book Club into an influential audience and discovery platform that now reaches 6.2 million readers and drives approximately $900M in annual U.S. book sales, according to the company.

By 2021, that combination of talent, intellectual property and direct audience access looked like the foundation of a next-generation media empire.

Candle Media, backed by capital from Blackstone, acquired Hello Sunshine as part of a broader effort to assemble a portfolio of entertainment brands. The company also purchased businesses including Moonbug Entertainment, ATTN: and Faraway Road Productions.

Then the streaming market changed.

Entertainment companies became more disciplined about content spending. The race to accumulate subscribers gave way to pressure for profitability. Production budgets tightened, consolidation slowed and some of the valuations assigned during the streaming boom became difficult to maintain.

Hello Sunshine’s return to founder-led ownership reflects how dramatically the media landscape has changed since 2021. It also gives Witherspoon an opportunity to regain greater influence over the company at a moment when its core assets may matter more than its former valuation suggests.

Under the new ownership structure, Hello Sunshine plans to refocus on premium film and television, Reese’s Book Club and new storytelling and distribution formats. Mediawan brings an international production network, while Witherspoon brings something harder to manufacture: a trusted personal brand and an audience willing to follow her recommendations from books to screens.

That relationship with consumers is increasingly valuable in a fragmented media market. Studios can finance productions. Streaming services can distribute them. Far fewer companies can reliably convince millions of people to care before a project is even released.

For Los Angeles, the deal reflects the increasingly fluid boundary between entertainment company, consumer brand and technology-enabled audience platform. The most resilient media businesses may not be those producing the greatest volume of content, but those that own a direct relationship with a specific community.

The first Hello Sunshine deal captured the optimism of the streaming era.

The second may offer a more focused model for what comes next, with the company once again guided by the founder who understood its audience from the beginning.

Hollywood loves a comeback story.

This time, the company is making one too.

LA Tech Week’s Final Stretch

Still making the most of LA Tech Week? We have organized the remaining events by location to make planning the weekend a little easier:

• Friday Event Lineup

• Saturday Event Lineup

• Sunday Event Lineup

Event schedules may change, so confirm the latest details with the organizer before heading out.

More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.

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