Anduril Doubles to $61 Billion in a $5 Billion Round, Cementing Defense Tech as Venture's Hottest Category
The Thrive- and a16z-led round roughly doubles the weapons maker's valuation in under a year, riding revenue that hit $2.2 billion and a major US Army agreement.
Anduril Industries, the autonomous-defense company founded by Palmer Luckey, raised $5 billion in a Series H round at a $61 billion valuation, announced May 13, 2026. The deal roughly doubles the company’s valuation in under a year and stands as the clearest signal yet that defense technology has become one of the hottest categories in venture capital.
The deal mechanics
The round was co-led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, two of the most influential names in technology investing. At $61 billion, Anduril is now valued at more than double the roughly $30.5 billion it commanded in its mid-2025 round, a $2.5 billion raise led by Founders Fund. The new financing brings total funding to over $11 billion across eight rounds, and is Anduril’s largest raise to date.
It is an extraordinary trajectory for a company that, less than a decade ago, was a startup pitching Silicon Valley on the unfashionable idea of building weapons.
What drives the valuation
Two things underpin the price. The first is revenue: Anduril’s sales roughly doubled to $2.2 billion in 2025, according to chief executive Brian Schimpf, real money, not just promise. The second is contracts. In March 2026, the U.S. Army awarded Anduril an enterprise agreement worth up to $20 billion over ten years, centered on its Lattice software platform and counter-drone mission. (Reporting differs on whether the figure is entirely new business or consolidates existing orders, and it is specifically an Army agreement rather than a blanket Pentagon deal.)
What excites investors most is the shape of that revenue: recurring, software-style contracts rather than one-off hardware sales, the model that made enterprise software so valuable applied to national defense.
The macro backdrop
Anduril is riding a powerful wave. Great-power competition, the rise of autonomous and drone warfare demonstrated in Ukraine, and rising defense budgets across the U.S. and Europe, including NATO’s new 5%-of-GDP spending target, have created enormous demand for exactly the kind of systems Anduril builds. The proceeds, Schimpf said, will go toward manufacturing capacity, research and development, and infrastructure.
The competitive landscape
Anduril is the bellwether, but not alone. A cohort of defense-tech startups, Germany’s Helsing, the maritime-focused Saronic, Shield AI and Castelion among them, is attracting serious capital. Together they represent a bet that the next generation of military power will be built by software-first companies rather than traditional prime contractors.
Risks and the IPO question
The risks are real. Anduril’s fortunes are tied closely to U.S. government spending, exposing it to the politics and unpredictability of federal procurement. Scaling manufacturing to match its order book is a formidable execution challenge. And while an eventual IPO is widely anticipated, the company has given no firm timeline.
For the legacy primes, Lockheed Martin, RTX and their peers, Anduril’s rise is a warning. A software-style enterprise agreement worth up to $20 billion is precisely the kind of deal that, until recently, would have been theirs. The contest for the future of defense procurement is now well and truly joined.
Sources
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