The brash founder behind Oculus and now Anduril has made it clear: going public isn’t a matter of if — it’s when. Palmer Luckey is playing the long game, and the stakes are national defense.
Anduril Industries, a fast-rising name in military technology, has plans to go public. That’s the word from CEO Palmer Luckey, who confirmed the move on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” Tuesday evening. “We are definitely going to be a publicly traded company,” he said. “We are running this company to be the shape of a publicly traded company.”
That’s not just talk. Behind the scenes, Anduril is already reshaping what Silicon Valley’s relationship with the Pentagon looks like.
IPO Talk Isn’t Just Buzz — It’s Part of the Business Model
Luckey didn’t spill the beans on a date. No roadmap yet. But his confidence wasn’t ambiguous.
He argued there’s no way for a company like Anduril to land “trillion-dollar defense contracts” without going public. That kind of money, he said, demands accountability, visibility — and the legitimacy that comes with trading on public markets.
And Anduril’s numbers back it up. Last week, Chairman Trae Stephens told Bloomberg that the company recently secured a jaw-dropping $2.5 billion in fresh funding. That round valued the firm at $30.5 billion. Yes, billion — with a B.
One sentence says it all: Anduril is officially one of America’s most valuable private tech companies.
The Meta Fallout, Anduril’s Rise, and a Return to Form
Palmer Luckey might be one of the few people to get fired from Facebook and end up even richer for it.
After Meta ousted him in 2017, the then-24-year-old didn’t crawl away quietly. Instead, he founded Anduril, named after a sword from The Lord of the Rings — a nod to Luckey’s flair for drama and symbolism.
What followed was a rare thing in the defense space: a startup that not only survived but thrived. The industry had long been dominated by giants like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, both of which are over a century old.
Anduril didn’t wait around. It built AI-powered surveillance towers, drone systems, autonomous vehicles — the kind of tech that would look just as at home in Call of Duty as it would in Ukraine.
Just last month, Luckey announced a collaboration with Meta to build augmented and virtual reality tools for the U.S. Army.
Short, sharp sentence: He buried the hatchet with Zuckerberg — and picked up a weapons contract.
Disrupting the Defense Industry, One Deal at a Time
Anduril’s approach is different. It doesn’t wait for Pentagon RFPs (Request for Proposals) to start building.
Instead, it builds first — then pitches. That’s more Silicon Valley than Washington, D.C.
This product-first, software-driven mindset has helped Anduril leap ahead of defense giants that are slower to move, slower to code, and slower to risk.
Here’s what’s making Anduril stand out:
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Speed: The company develops faster, often iterating weapons systems in months — not years.
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Autonomy: It leans heavily into AI and autonomous warfare tools.
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Private capital: With billions in private funding, it doesn’t need to wait for government grants to innovate.
Luckey’s argument is blunt but hard to ignore: “You don’t get trillion-dollar defense deals if you’re not public.”
From Disruptor to Defense Contractor: The Numbers Are Wild
To understand how fast Anduril’s growing, look at its CNBC Disruptor 50 ranking this year: No. 1. That’s ahead of biotech firms, crypto darlings, and next-gen chipmakers.
Anduril’s meteoric rise can be better understood with a quick glance at the numbers:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2017 |
| Recent Valuation | $30.5 billion |
| Latest Funding Round | $2.5 billion |
| CNBC Disruptor 50 Rank (2025) | 1st |
| Estimated Defense Contracts | ~$1.5 billion (secured/active) |
This isn’t your grandfather’s Raytheon.
The IPO Drought Might Be Ending — Anduril Is Leading the Way
Tech IPOs have been mostly absent since the chaos of 2021 cooled off the public markets. Many late-stage startups held off on listings, watching inflation, interest rates, and geopolitical turmoil freeze investor sentiment.
But 2025 is looking different. There’s a gentle thaw in the pipeline. Anduril’s move could be a signal.
And it’s not just investor buzz. Venture-backed companies like Stripe and Databricks are reportedly revisiting their IPO plans. A successful Anduril debut could push others off the sidelines.
One short line: The dry spell may finally be breaking.
A Company Shaped for War — and Wall Street
Luckey’s blend of idealism and opportunism has created something rare: a defense contractor that feels like a Silicon Valley darling.
He talks about national security like a patriot and builds tech like a gamer. His confidence isn’t subtle. He once said Anduril’s job is to “make sure America wins all its wars.”
The company is already building autonomous drones and battlefield surveillance systems that can operate in contested airspace. It’s racing to redefine what military superiority looks like in the AI era.
And yet, even with all the firepower and funding, Luckey says the IPO is still the missing piece. A way to scale, to compete, to lock in legitimacy with the people holding the purse strings — the U.S. government.
