Anduril Industries, one of Orange County’s more closely watched startup firms, is ramping up its public profile, not to mention its defense and security-focused technology offerings, while shedding more light on its local growth plans.
The Irvine-based company—the brainchild of 26-year-old Palmer Luckey, the founder of virtual reality firm Oculus VR, which was sold for $2 billion in 2014 to Facebook—has been gathering national headlines this month for the implementation of its first big technology product, a large-scale security surveillance system called Lattice.
Lattice uses a combination of radar sensor-clad surveillance towers, drones and artificial intelligence to monitor large areas and, in Anduril’s words, “allow warfighters, first responders and law enforcement to act quickly with the best information available.”
So far the product’s being tested along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent unauthorized entry into the country.
That politically charged work has thrust the upstart company—formed in 2017, shortly after Luckey unceremoniously left Facebook—into the broader national debate about U.S. border security and immigration.
Lattice’s work along the border has been described as a “virtual wall” that in theory could complement, or alleviate the need for, a physical wall between the two countries.
Physical security measures “are important, but not a panacea,” Luckey said via Twitter this month.
“The only way to achieve perfect awareness and control is deftly combining traditional measures, new technology and great humans.”
Anduril thinks it has the technology part of that equation figured out.
The company claims the Lattice system is “able to detect, classify and track any car, person, drone or other threat in a restricted area.”
“We’re not a concept, we’re not a white paper, we’re a real system that’s actually deployed in multiple sites on the U.S. border,” Luckey told the Washington Post earlier this month.
Anduril’s been working with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to test its product in San Diego, and it says it will install systems elsewhere in the state this month under a new contract with the government agency.
Terms of the government contracts have not been disclosed.
It is also reported to have a test deployment in the works in Texas.
“We just signed a large expansion of our technology on the border, and we’re going to be putting more of it out there,” Luckey said in the Feb. 5 report in the Post, whose timing and placement appears to be part of Anduril’s ongoing efforts to further ingratiate itself with Washington, D.C.’s robust—but in Luckey’s view, stagnated—defense industry.
Luckey late last year was quoted as stating there have been no new defense companies worth more than $1 billion created since the end of the Cold War—a fact his startup is trying to rectify.
Recent hires bear out the company’s unabashed goal of becoming a go-to defense contractor.
The company last year brought on former Senate Armed Services Committee staff director Christian Brose as its head of strategy.
In addition to OC, the company has an office in the Washington D.C. area, where Brose—who led the armed services committee staff under the late Sen. John McCain—splits his time.
HQ Security
In Irvine, the company appears to be a month or two away from moving into a prominent new headquarter facility, at the intersection of Jamboree Road and Michelson Drive.
Last year, it inked one of OC’s larger office leases when it agreed to take all of 2722 Michelson Drive, a 155,000-square-foot creative office building now in the final stages of being built by its owner, Irvine-based LBA Realty.
The lease, first reported by the Business Journal, should allow for Anduril to comfortably hold several hundred employees; the company’s LinkedIn page currently reports it having about 50 workers.
It’s advertising for another 10 positions, mostly engineering-related.
Anduril won’t occupy the entire office immediately, the Business Journal has learned.
Irvine-based advertising technology firm Viant Technology LLC—currently an occupant at the Jamboree Plaza office complex about a half mile away—plans to sublease about a third of the building under a short-term deal, allowing Anduril time to ramp up operations and take on more space as needed.
The initial sublease was part of the company’s plan when it first signed a deal for the building last year, sources tell the Business Journal.
LBA Realty was represented by Cushman & Wakefield Inc. in the initial lease, while Anduril was represented by Hughes Marino Inc. Both brokerage firms declined to comment on the latest transaction with Viant.
CoStar Group Inc. records estimate the sublease deal to be in the $3.25 per square foot range, on a monthly basis.
Encouraging Debate
Anduril’s lead investor is Founders Fund, a venture capital firm headed by billionaire Peter Thiel, who, like Luckey, has been a prominent supporter of Donald Trump.
A few engineers coming from Thiel’s Palo Alto-based software firm Palantir Technologies are among the top executives at Anduril, along with other early-stage employees at Oculus VR.
Founders Fund led a $41 million round for the company last year.
Luckey has stated that he chose Orange County, rather than Silicon Valley, to be the home base of Anduril because it’s easier here to recruit employees willing to do government work.
In terms of company culture, Anduril encourages “debate, understanding that, while we can differ in opinions, we strive together to fix the biggest national security problems,” according to its website.
