Andundil, a military start-up of artificial intelligence, should finish a new funding which would double the value of the company at $ 28 billion, according to four people familiar with negotiations.
The financing round, led by Founders Fund and has not yet closed, collects up to $ 2.5 billion, people said. Funders Fund alone plans to invest $ 1 billion, the largest check ever written by the company, two of the people said.
Andundil designs and builds autonomous systems and weapons for military agencies and other government agencies, including flying drones, missiles, underwater ships and surveillance equipment to monitor national borders and the battlefield. This is a new wave of companies that build systems based on AI technologies for the government.
The Founders’ Fund, created by the entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel, has supported Andundil since his start in 2017, and one of Andundil’s co -founders, Trae Stephens, is a partner of the company. Mr. Thiel, who also co -founded Palant, a military technology company, has long been a support for republican candidates, including President Trump in 2016 and JD Vance’s race for the Senate in 2022.
Six months ago, Andundil raised $ 1.5 billion to an evaluation of $ 14 billion.
The Founders’ Fund refused to comment. CNBC First of all Details reported funding talks.
The latest influx of money comes as defense technology start-ups are bubbling about their prospects. Enthusiasm for building technology for the American army has increased in recent years in Silicon Valley, an overthrow of more than a decade to move away from these contracts. No more recently than 2018, thousands of Google employees have signed a Protestant letter against the military contracts of the company.
This resistance has changed slowly, because more and more venture capital companies are paying money in the sector.
Trump is expected to kill investments more. Palmer Luckey, the founder of Andundil, supported the president since his 2016 campaign. He donated the Trump’s campaigns in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections and welcomed fundraising.
On the night of the presidential election in November, Mr. Luckey posted a meme celebrating the victory of Mr. Trump. Elon Musk, the technological executive and advisor close to the president, replied, adage It was “very important to open DOD / Intel for entrepreneurial companies like yours”.
In January, Mr. Luckey and Andundil announced his intention to build a $ 1 billion factory in Ohio which, according to them, would possibly produce tens of thousands of autonomous systems and weapons each year.
