Anduril CEO Weighs on $61 Billion Round

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]This is confirmation a little bit of what we reported about a month couple of months ago. But, actually, when when you come on the program, a lot of the questions we get for you are operational. So let's take the $5,000,000,000 that you've raised. How much of that is to get Arsenal one done built and all of the other, operational timelines that you guys are holding yourselves to, imminently?

[00:00:22]Yeah. So as a business, you know, we're we're entering this period where production is the name of the game. So vast majority of our capital goes to scaling our factories, building out our production workforce, funding all that inventory, and really just getting that ramp to production working. And we're increasing production revenue something like 250%, over the year, just year over year.

[00:00:43]So just huge ramp in what we're seeing in terms of demand for our technology.

[00:00:48]Demand. Talk about it. How much breadth are we seeing the geopolitical conflicts? They have sadly increased, and we're still seeing this focus on the need for defense tech, but we know that the money is often still spent on primes.

[00:01:02]Yeah. I mean, look. We are still relatively young as a company. We're nine years in.

[00:01:06]We've been very successful, by any measure for a company at that age in the defense world. And in, you know, the fraction of the market we're actually addressing right now is still quite small. But where we are seeing a lot of demand is, you know, particularly around things like counter drone and air and missile defense. That's where you look at the current conflict. This is a huge issue. This is a huge area where we're seeing massive increases in what the customers want, you know, our electronic warfare systems, our surface to air missile systems. And then the other capability that we're seeing a lot of demand on that was, you know, just announced today was a multiyear procurement of a low cost cruise missile that we call Barracuda. The department is buying, you know, thousands a year of these, and we're ramping these at just an unprecedented pace and being able to get these out to help with that critical munitions shortage and the ability to sustain these conflicts and provide the deterrence we need.

[00:02:02]Brian, just just humor me on this one. The $5,000,000,000 is sufficient to finish Arsenal one and start the the production ramp?

[00:02:10]Yeah. So we we are already ramping production with the money we had in the bank.

[00:02:14]This is really about how do we continue to fuel that growth. I don't think we're gonna see Arsenal one be done anytime soon because I think the demand we're gonna continue to see and the amount we're gonna have to continue to scale is just gonna ramp and ramp over the next several years. This is a good problem to have. Right? And so we Right. Benefiting from the private markets and the ability to fund these very aggressive ramps, And it's a huge testament to, you the American capital system that we can fund these things very, very quickly.

[00:02:43]It it was interesting to go through a letter to to your shareholders that you wrote back in January actually and, like, kind of foretelling what was to come in the year.

[00:02:51]There's still a bit of a mystique about Andoril. Right? So I think Palmer Lucky, one of your cofounders, has talked about the idea that half of Andoril's products aren't really known about. There's particular interest in the the next wave of subterranean weapon systems. Could you talk as far as you can about where those get built? You know, the next phase of life around the world beyond what the initial focus of Arsenal one is.

[00:03:14]Yeah. So the the purpose of the board letter was to lay out a lot of the, you know, kinda why of what are we doing. What's made us successful is we look at, you know, can with the shifts in technology, the shifts in warfare, what are the capabilities that are gonna be needed over the next five or ten years, and how can we start to invest to bring those forward? So, you know, we're working on a whole plethora of different products, you know, everything expanding the air and missile defense portfolio we're working on, you know, new domains we're operating in. Palmer's always experimenting with the latest and greatest technologies and figuring out what you can do that nobody thought possible. So we just have a a constant source of new ideas, how technology can apply. But fundamentally, we look at this question of, you know, what are going to be the dominant technologies over the next ten or twenty years? And what we're seeing in Iran, we're seeing in Ukraine is that this idea of just the sheer volume of munitions that are exchanged and the need to defend against that. These are are critical capabilities that in any world will need to be solved for. And so a lot of our focus is really around these ideas of, you know, how do we provide the right strike capabilities, the right intelligent targeting capabilities, and the the defense of these as well.

[00:04:34]At the right price. And I'm really interested, Brian, in some of these new ideas come from the administration itself, and the Golden Dome project is one of those new ideas that according to current budget forecast coming from the congressional budget office, could be up to $1,200,000,000,000 of the ultimate project. Now I know you're among the companies who've been awarded initial contracts, Brian. What do you make of how much this could end up costing and its and its worth?

[00:05:00]So the a lot of those estimates are based off of what this would have cost historically. Right? And that was based around building these things that are extremely expensive and extremely exquisite where you're talking, you know, $10.20, $30,000,000 a shot to, you know, actually provide that defense. Well, with commercial technologies taking a smarter approach, using a lot of proven, you know, capabilities that already exist and adapting them for this problem, we believe you can get this to a much more efficient place. And and probably even more than the price is can you even produce it? And today, that that's one of the major concerns. Right? You know, we we shot something like a decade of Tomahawk production in in '72 out you know, it's just a crazy rate that we're consuming these things, and the ability to replenish these becomes a a critical issue. So our view of this is these are solvable problems. You can do it in a more efficient way than has been historically executed. And I think that, you know, being able to execute this at a national scale is achievable now in a much more aggressive timeline, at a much more efficient price than I think people have historically imagined.

[00:06:10]Okay. You get asked this a lot. Palmer Lucky gets asked this a lot. Trey gets asked it a lot. But when you do a a round of this scale and you look at the composition of it, who's not there, people want to know about the rationale for Andrew O'Day going public, why there weren't more crossover investors. You know, this is the first time actually, Brian, you you the three of us have had to talk in length because when we were with you in October, the president, made some news about China. So just talk us through Brian Shimp's thinking on an Andoril IPO. So we want to build one of the most impactful businesses in the world. Like, that's our goal. Right? We want to seriously move the needle for The US and allied warfighters, provide the right deterrence capabilities, and do it at immense scale. Right? That is fundamentally what we care about. The rationale for going public is a lot less than it used to be. The private capital markets have grown in scale. The ability to fund a business like ours you know, when we were doing this a few years ago, we were, you know, at the upper end of what capital raises look like in the private market. We are a fraction of an AI fundraise at this point. And so the the amount of capital that is available and, you know, wants to support these types of companies is is massive. So we're not in a rush to go public. Right? We don't need to do it from the perspective of capital availability or liquidity. You know, we can provide liquidity to our early investors, our employees in relatively straightforward ways. There's a lot of means to do that. So a lot of the historic reasons of why you rush to go public don't don't really exist anymore. So for us, the the question is when does it actually make sense? And for us, it's you know, we've proven that our business model works. We've proven that we can scale. And, you know, the fundamental economics of the business are shown to be, you know, as successful as we wanna be. You know, a high growth company that can operate at high margins, that's fundamentally what we wanna show. And when we feel like we've shown that, that's a perfectly reasonable time to go public. So we're not in any rush.

[00:08:12]We don't have any pressure to do it. It's great.

[00:08:14]Yeah. But but investors want a stake, particularly retail. And I know you've been outspoken about the secondary market. Look. Today, Anthropic, I think, is yesterday, just put out a new blog saying that, look. There are some areas in which Anthropic seems to be trading on a secondary market, and they call them stocks scams in some areas. They say it's issuing fraudulent share certificates in the private artificial AI developer. Are you warning about that still? How worried are you about Andrill shares trading fraudulently on a secondary market?

[00:08:44]Look. We try to control our cap table tightly and make sure that, you know, everyone investor we have, we understand who they are. They're in it for the long haul, and they're in it for the right reasons. The there is a lot of very bad actors that exist trying to, you know, hawk things that are just not allowed. Right? And Right.

[00:09:05]We've seen a lot of prosecutions and other things related to this. Right? This is not a a new issue. Right? And so I I think there's there's a problem here. I think the government's responding to the companies? Like, are there any secondary market providers you take issue with in particular?

[00:09:22]Sorry. Just briefly.

[00:09:23]Name names. No. I mean, look. Like, the the reality is it's mostly individual bad actors.

[00:09:29]Very few of these, you know, second market brokerages or listing things are are inherently the problem. The issue is investors, you know, not even investors. These brokers misrepresenting Yeah. What they have access to, and that's not good in a public market. It's not good in a private market.

[00:09:45]No.

[00:09:45]It's So the you know, I I think it is a problem, but, you know, it's something that we do everything we can to control and and try to help curtail. And it's affecting every one of the companies who are in you know, interesting in the private markets.

[00:09:58]Brian, you've been generous to your time. Before we we lose you from the program, the president's visit to China, the timeline of the threat to Taiwan 2027, what's Andrew O'Day thinking on that?

[00:10:11]Look. Diplomacy is good. We we are in the deterrence business. We do not want there to be conflict. And I think the president going and engaging with Xi is a fantastic thing. And, I'm very excited to see what comes out of this. And, you know, we're also providing a lot of technology to Taiwan, supporting them in every opportunity we can, because we believe that they need the right capabilities and to have the right deterrence. And, you know, the the long talked about window of 2027, kind of the period of maximum danger, I think it is true. You know, I don't think anyone believes that it was a, you know, 01/01/2027, an invasion begins, but it highlights a period where, you know, kind of the the PRC has a more established military capability and The US and Taiwan at a relative disadvantage compared to other points in time. And so it is a period of significant risk. And with all of the complexities going on in the world with Iran, with Ukraine, you know, with all the other areas that are, you know, hot spots in the world, it creates a significant stress on the US military. So I think this is the opportunity for diplomacy is good to try to ensure that nothing does happen, and try to find a scenario that preserves the status quo that is working reasonably well. And that's that's honestly what I hope for out of this summit.