Anduril Industries, the tech-focused defense and border protection company in Irvine, says it believes so much in military experience that about 20% of its workforce is made up of veterans.
The well-funded startup, located near John Wayne Airport, posted a blog item earlier this month to pay homage to ex-service members to coincide with Veterans Day Nov. 11.
“Anduril can’t function without our community of veterans,” chief executive Brian Schimpf wrote. “About 20% of our company is veterans, and that’s because they viscerally understand the problems we’re trying to fix, and they bring a combination of operational and strategic thinking that’s hard to find elsewhere.”
Schimpf praised the “invaluable work” the Anduril veterans perform for the company, whose headcount has more than doubled to about 350 from approximately 160 at the end of last year.
Anduril, founded by Orange County entrepreneur Palmer Luckey in 2017, has been rapidly expanding and announced it has set up shop in Boston and London in addition to Irvine, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
Incredible Sacrifices
In the shoutout to veterans, Luckey said: “To the military, no matter how much technology I build, I’ll always be the ‘computer boy.’ And that’s how it should be—nothing I do can compare to the sacrifice of someone on the front lines living the problems we’re trying to solve day in, day out.”
“I hope the United States never has to fight another war. Not going to bet on it, though. Our veterans make incredible sacrifices, well beyond what any reasonable sense of duty or patriotism would oblige,” Luckey wrote in a separate Twitter post the same day.
Luckey, 28, is the founder of Oculus VR, a virtual reality headset developer that started in 2012. He sold the then Irvine-based firm to Facebook in 2014 for about $3 billion.
Anduril in July raised $200 million in a new funding round, almost doubling the company’s valuation to $1.9 billion.
Luckey has been a supporter of President Donald Trump, hosting a fundraiser for him at his home on Lido Isle off Newport Beach last month.
The young entrepreneur is known for his staunch support of the U.S. military and its allies.
“Veterans operate best when we’re given very challenging or complex problems and a desired end state,” said Scott Zolendziewski, an Anduril employee and former Green Beret, in the Anduril blog post.
Veterans’ Leadership
“Every veteran at Anduril has a huge amount of leadership experience up front,” said Kelsee Hober, who served as the company commander of a UH-60 Blackhawk unit in the US Army. “Vets genuinely try to be team players and look at everything we achieve as a joint success.”
Anduril was advertising for more than 70 positions companywide, ranging from drone technician to software engineer and test pilot, as of Nov. 19. The majority of the openings were in Irvine.
The company is one of 15 companies awarded Air Force contracts that could be worth up to $950 million each to develop a sensor-based system across all branches of the military, the Defense Department said in September.
The companies will “compete for future efforts” to develop the “Joint All Domain Command and Control system,” according to a DOD announcement.
