- General
- March 10, 2019
- 7 minutes read
Anduril Got U.S. DoD AI Contract
United States acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan image : North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Anduril Industries – a…
 |
| United States acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan
image : North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
|
Anduril Industries – a startup that counts Oculus co-founder and virtual reality poster child Palmer Luckey as a co-founder – earned a contract for Project Maven – the controversial AI contract from the U.S. Department of Defense that Google pulled out of after employee backlash, according to a report from The Intercept.
The Intercept, an investigative news outlet funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, notably first broke the news of Google’s involvement in the military AI contract dubbed Project Maven. It says Anduril began work on the project last year, along with efforts to aid the US Defense Department’s newly created Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, citing documents it viewed.
 |
| Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey
image : Teodor Bjerrang / Flickr
|
Palmer Luckey has previously dropped hints on Anduril’s work with the Pentagon. “We’re deployed at several military bases. We’re deployed in multiple spots along the U.S. border,” Luckey said at a Web Summit event, ambiguously adding: “We’re deployed around some other infrastructure I can’t talk about.”
“What we’re working on is taking data from lots of different sensors, putting it into an AI-powered sensor fusion platform so that you can build a perfect 3D model of everything that’s going on in a large area,” Luckey said. “Then we take that data and run predictive analytics on it, and tag everything with metadata, find what’s relevant, then push it to people who are out in the field.”
 |
| Founders Fund, a VC firm chaired by Peter Thiel is an investor in Anduril. Founders Fund has also backed companies like Oculus (Palmer Luckey’s previous company), Airbnb, SpaceX, Facebook, Stripe, Oscar Health, Flexport, Affirm, Spotify, Lyft, Wish, Lyft, Stemcentrx, Niantic, Nubank, Postmates, DeepMind, Credit Karma, Unity, Zocdoc, Twilio, Yammer and The Climate Corporation.
image: (cc) Kenneth Yeung – www.snapfoc.us
|
Anduril is headed by Brian Schimpf, a former director of engineering at Palantir, another secretive startup that has drawn controversy for tight-lipped work with several government agencies. The company is said to have raised nearly $60 million, from investors including Founders Fund, 8VC, SV Angel, Spark Capital, General Catalyst, XYZ Ventures and Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest fund.
For reference, Founders Fund is chaired by Peter Thiel, a co-founder and current executive chairman at Palantir. 8VC founder Joe Lonsdale also co-founded Palantir.
