Palmer Luckey can’t stop making headlines.
See Kevin Costelloe’s front-page story on Luckey’s defense tech startup Anduril Industries, which is aiming for one of the biggest funding rounds in the country this year, one which could vault the Costa Mesa company’s valuation to about $12.5B, about seven years after its founding.
In Newport Beach, Luckey on June 8 will be co-hosting a fundraising event for Donald Trump, with Kimberly and John Word. The former president is expected to attend the event after another fundraiser in Beverly Hills the prior day. The location of the Newport Beach event hasn’t been disclosed.
While a clear backer of Trump, Luckey has noted that Anduril’s contract wins have increased dramatically under the Biden administration.
Team-D had its own local presidential welcome this month, with Bill Clinton making a stop at Joe Kiani’s office at Irvine-based Masimo (Nasdaq: MASI) on May 10.
“One of the greatest presidents ever,” said the device maker CEO about Clinton, who is a frequent speaker at the annual conference for the Patient Safety Movement Foundation, an Irvine nonprofit backed by Kiani that aims to eliminate unnecessary deaths at hospitals.
Joe Kiani has also been a longtime backer of Joe and Jill Biden; the latter of whom was on hand for a May 18 performance of “Appropriate,” a multi-Tony nominated play on Broadway that stars Ella Beatty, the daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.
Also on hand at the show: Business Journal Publisher Richard Reisman, along with his daughter Kimmie and son-in-law Patrick.
“We met with my niece, Ella, backstage,” following the show, said Reisman, who noted that Jill Biden “was sitting in the row in front, but more to the side. So, we had better seats.”
More Business Journal sightings in NYC: Evolus (Nasdaq: EOLS) CFO Sandra Beaver got a shout-out last week on Wall Street, with Nasdaq’s giant electronic billboard touting her recent win at our annual CFO of the Year Awards, in the public company sector.
See the May 20 print edition for more on Beaver and the other CFO award winners.
Anduril Industries is clearly OC’s best-funded defense startup. No. 2 is likely Mach Industries, founded by Ethan Thornton a year ago while still a teenager.
The Surf City-based firm late last year raised a reported $79M, which pushed their valuation to about $335M.
The Business Journal last month was first to report on Mach Industries moving its base from Austin, Texas to Huntington Beach.
“Upon closing our Series A in October 2023, we decided to move the company to Huntington Beach to be closer to the best technical talent and better scale,” Thornton said in a post to the company’s website last week.
The company says it is making an “extremely capable stealthy, supersonic” drone-like jet fighter, dubbed Viper, which “we will first deploy as a cruise missile.”
“We’ve burned less than 15% of the money we raised, have ultra-clear customer support, and have rallied a small, incredibly mission-oriented team of 45 of the world’s best operators, engineers and manufacturers,” Thornton said.
For more on the company, see next week’s print edition.
