Anduril is said to be raising a new round of funding that may push its valuation up to about $100 billion, per Reuters.

Defense tech giant Anduril, which is rapidly expanding its operations in the Seattle area, is looking to raise a new round of capital that could value the company at about $100 billion, reports Reuters.

That would give the privately-held startup a bigger valuation than Northrop Grumman, the 87-year-old defense company which is currently valued at $77 billion. Boeing’s market value stands at $165 billion, while Lockheed Martin is valued at $134 billion.

Founded in 2017, Anduril is led by the Hawaiian-shirt and cargo-shorts wearing Palmer Luckey, the 33-year-old creator of Oculus VR, whom the New York Times described as the “It Guy of the booming defense-technology industry.”

In May, the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based company raised a $5 billion series H funding round — including investments from Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz — that valued Anduril at $61 billion.

Anduril is rapidly expanding in the Seattle area, with offices in downtown Seattle and Bellevue where the company is working on a range of defense technologies, including its Lattice command and control software. That platform is described as an “AI-powered battle management platform built to accelerate complex kill chains.”

It also recently established operations at the historic Foss Maritime shipyard along the southern bank of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, where the company is developing autonomous naval vessels and other maritime technologies.

The company’s expansion in Washington state is not without controversy. Last weekend, protesters handed out flyers outside the company’s downtown Seattle offices that said: “Anduril Out! No AI for War and Plunder!”

Anduril said it recognizes the right to protest, while defending its work supporting the U.S. military and service members.

“We respect the right to free speech and we understand that protests are a hallmark of democratic expression,” Anduril said in a statement provided to GeekWire. “That said, it is perplexing when people choose to protest a company dedicated to supporting the very military that safeguards those rights.”

Earlier this week, Anduril announced a new program called Thunder, an autonomous attack rotorcraft that it said is “designed to multiply the combat power and increase the survivability of current and next-generation crewed attack and assault aircraft.”

The size of the potential funding round hasn’t been determined and the terms are still in flux, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. One structure under discussion would have investors commit upfront to a second financing within a year at a higher valuation, contingent on Anduril hitting certain financial targets.

In a statement, Anduril said the “reporting runs well ahead of the facts.”

“Any details about terms, structure, pricing, or timing of a future financing round are purely speculative,” the company said. “As a private company, we regularly evaluate opportunities to fund the growth of the business. Beyond that, we don’t comment on rumors.”

Seattle-based Overland AI has landed a U.S. Marine Corps contract to produce autonomous ground vehicles, a milestone the defense-tech startup says makes it the first ground autonomy company to serve as the prime contractor on a military production deal. 

The nearly $20 million agreement — $19.7 million, according to the Department of War — calls for Overland to deliver more than a dozen autonomous ground vehicles, along with the software that runs them. Initial deliveries are expected to begin sometime in early 2027.

The agreement was announced June 29. The vehicles will work with a Marine Corps system that shoots down enemy drones. Overland’s vehicles will initially handle resupply for those crews rather than replace any existing vehicles, co-founder and CEO Byron Boots said in a media briefing, as reported by trade publications DefenseScoop and Defense One. 

Boots is a University of Washington machine-learning professor who leads the school’s Robot Learning Laboratory and is the Amazon Professor of Machine Learning at the UW’s Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. He co-founded Overland in 2022 with Stephanie Bonk, the company’s president, spinning it out of the UW. 

The company’s technology is designed to let military vehicles drive themselves across rough, off-road terrain in places where GPS isn’t available. 

Overland has grown to more than 100 employees and raised over $140 million in venture funding, including a $100 million round in February led by the venture firm 8VC. It opened a 22,000-square-foot production facility in Seattle last year, and ranks No. 9 on the GeekWire 200, our index of the top privately held Pacific Northwest tech companies. 

The company isn’t alone in chasing military ground autonomy. One of its rivals, Maryland-based Forterra, won a larger, $92 million Marine Corps production deal earlier in June — but as the autonomy supplier under prime contractor Oshkosh Defense, rather than holding the contract itself. That’s the distinction Overland is claiming as a first. 

Overland’s deal came through a Pentagon program called APFIT — short for Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies — which fast-tracks funding to move promising technology from prototypes into production. For Overland, it marks a step from testing and demonstrations into building vehicles at scale for the military. 

“We’re registering extremely high demand from U.S. operational units who want to incorporate this technology into their concepts of operation,” Boots said in the briefing, pointing to the war in Ukraine as evidence of a growing role for uncrewed vehicles.

Overland has been working for years with the Army, Marine Corps and Special Operations Command, also completing a multiyear DARPA autonomy program. The new contract builds on recent work integrating its self-driving technology into Marine Corps vehicles.