Defense Startup Anduril Industries Seeking to Raise $500M-Plus: Report
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Defense Startup Anduril Industries Seeking to Raise $500M-Plus: Report

Anduril Industries, the Costa Mesa-based defense technology startup and U.S. military contractor, is reportedly looking to raise at least $500 million in an upcoming funding round at a $7 billion pre-money valuation.


Anduril could raise up to $1 billion in the Series E round, The Information reported on Thursday, citing two sources with “direct knowledge of the matter.” The publication also reported the round, which has not yet closed, is being led by an existing investor. The startup has raised $835 million to date from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, D1 Capital Partners and venture capitalist Elad Gil. Gil led a $450 million Series D round last June that valued Anduril at $4.6 billion.

Anduril develops and builds both hardware and software for defense applications, including border surveillance towers and self-piloting drones (including an autonomous submarine drone made for deepwater exploration). Its core software product is an operating system called Lattice, which is used to detect potential security threats.

The company has clinched several lucrative government contracts in recent years. In 2020, it struck a deal with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to deploy 200 surveillance towers on the Mexican border. In January, it inked a nearly $1 billion contract with U.S. Special Operations Command for systems that detect and neutralize counter-drone attacks.

Anduril was launched in 2017 by Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, who sold the virtual reality headset firm to Facebook for $3 billion in 2014. After leaving Oculus, Luckey founded Anduril alongside Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens and ex-Palantir executives Matt Grimm and Brian Schimpf, who now serves as Anduril’s CEO. Luckey is the company’s chief technology officer.

Anduril and Luckey did not respond to dot.LA’s requests for comment.

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Venture Deals in LA Are Slowing Down, And Other Takeaways From Our Quarterly VC Survey
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It looks like venture deals are stagnating in Los Angeles.

That’s according to dot.LA’s most recent quarterly VC sentiment survey, in which we asked L.A.-based venture capitalists for their take on the current state of the market. This time, roughly 83% of respondents reported that the number of deals they made in L.A. either stayed the same or declined in the first quarter of 2022 (58% said they stayed the same compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, while 25% said they decreased).

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Keerthi Vedantam

Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.

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Veo
Image courtesy of Veo

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