Anduril and Palmer Luckey

General Discussion
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The real bank for real Americans doing real things!

The cutting-edge business model is based on next-gen concepts like "don't let your client's money disappear", "care at all about national security", and most importantly, "the market sometimes goes down". https://t.co/NsUOYKggHh

— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) February 7, 2026

If you are interested in learning more, I talked with @tbpn about Erebor last year while it was still in stealth.

We are opening on a Sunday (a first for a US bank) to highlight our 24/7, 365 operation and service.https://t.co/JTacnmFAT6

— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) February 7, 2026

Palmer Luckey on Erebor, his new bank just valued at over $4B:

"We'll have the most conservative loan-to-deposit ratios of any bank in history."

"I'm not a finance bro. I want something like Erebor to exist because of and for the sake of my love for these other technologies." pic.twitter.com/0dX7d5ER6b

— TBPN (@tbpn) December 22, 2025

Congratulations to the entire Erebor team! This is an exciting day for the banking system and reflects the OCC’s commitment to a dynamic and diverse financial system that remains innovative and relevant over time. https://t.co/raA7OOLxSr

— Comptroller Jonathan Gould (@USComptroller) February 7, 2026
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From Gemini:

This new facility, which spans the Long Beach and Lakewood border, is a massive step for the company’s research and production capabilities.

Key Campus Details

  • Size: 1.18 million square feet across six buildings.
  • Jobs: Expected to create roughly 5,500 direct jobs for engineers, software developers, and flight-test teams.
  • Location: The site is at Douglas Park, right next to the Long Beach Airport (the former home of Boeing’s aircraft manufacturing).
  • Timeline: Construction is underway, with the campus expected to be operational by mid-2027.
  • Function: It will feature 750,000 square feet of office space and 435,000 square feet for R&D and prototype manufacturing.

Strategic Fit

Long Beach has rebranded itself as “Space Beach” due to the influx of companies like Rocket Lab and Relativity Space. For Anduril, this location is ideal because it is only:

  • 30 minutes from their Costa Mesa headquarters.
  • 90 minutes from their Capistrano test site.

While the “Arsenal-1” facility in Ohio (the one near the bank headquarters) focuses on hyperscale mass production of thousands of drones, the Long Beach site is geared toward the rapid prototyping and engineering of their newest defense tech.

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Palmer is building stuff in the no go zone? Maybe he isn’t as smart as I thought.

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  • Anduril Industries, a U.S. defense tech firm specializing in AI-driven autonomous systems, is negotiating a funding round of up to $8 billion that could value it at over $60 billion, doubling its $30.5 billion valuation from a $2.5 billion raise in June 2025.
  • The influx aims to fund expansion of a new weapons factory and advanced autonomous tech development, building on Anduril’s revenue growth to $1 billion in 2024 amid rising global defense demands.
  • This potential deal underscores surging investor interest in private defense startups, positioning Anduril as a leader rivaling traditional contractors like Lockheed Martin in valuation terms.

Grok

Edit:
Anduril Industries has raised over $6.26 billion to date. Below is the breakdown of their fundraising rounds by series letter, date, and valuation.

Fundraising History

Series Date Amount Post-Money Valuation
Series G June 2025 $2.5B $30.5B
Series F August 2024 $1.5B $14.0B
Series E December 2022 $1.48B $8.48B
Series D June 2021 $450M $4.6B
Series C July 2020 $200M $1.9B
Series B September 2019 $127M $1.0B
Series A June 2018 $41M $250M
Seed August 2017 $17.5M $88M

Key Highlights

  • Current Status: As of February 2026, reports indicate Anduril is in talks to raise up to $8 billion in a new round that could value the company at $60 billion+.
  • Major Investors: Founders Fund (led by Peter Thiel) has participated in nearly every round, including a landmark $1 billion investment in Series G. Other backers include Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), General Catalyst, Sands Capital, and Fidelity.
  • Purpose of Funds: Recent massive raises (Series F & G) are primarily directed toward “Arsenal,” the company’s initiative to hyperscale defense manufacturing for autonomous weapons systems.

Gemini

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Powering America’s Arsenal: Anduril Expands Rocket Motor Production with Additional $43.7M in Defense Production Act Title III Funding

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Perplexity:

https://www.perplexity.ai/page/anduril-s-luckey-says-pentagon-QBkdTzlQQc2ZSUM5UvkKJg

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey said the Pentagon could have been “more forceful” against Anthropic in an interview previewed March 15 on “The Axios Show.”

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Anthropic has been dodgy for some time. Some call it Misanthropic.

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Why should any company be forced to give its IP to an untrustworthy government. In all likelihood, the government wants the code to provide to OpenAI.

The fact that this remains an issue that is constantly brought up is good enough proof that the powers that be have ill intent.

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The text quoted by Citizen_bitcoin did not claim that the government asked to have Anthropic’s IP or source code. Quoting directly:

The conflict has divided Silicon Valley over whether AI companies or the government should set the terms for military use of artificial intelligence. [emphasis added]

Further, the dispute centered around the government’s “…unrestricted use of the company’s Claude AI model for ‘all lawful purposes.’” [emphasis added]

The issue is simply whether Anthropic can put restrictions of the use of its technology beyond that it should be used lawfully. It’s as if an arms manufacturer sought to restrict the military’s use of firearms it manufactured to specific situations. In either case, the government let a contract for an item and expects to be able to use it only restricted by the rule of law, not by the caprice of the manufacturer.

As Mr Luckey points out, placing such restrictions means, in effect, “…you are effectively saying you do not believe in this democratic experiment.” One could argue that democratic methods are ineffective at controlling the behavior of government but that is a critique of democracy/republicanism. As it turns out, that is a valid critique but the leadership of Anthropic is even less accountable to the public than the government is. Thus, replacing the government with a couple of plutocrats is not a good trade.

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Thanks for the clarification. However, any citizen or non-governmental entity should have the right to put whatever terms it wants on the sale of its products.

Let’s use a real life example. My former employer sold hearing protection to the US government. Under the US government terms, proper training and instruction was rejected. The US government would train the soldiers.

My former employer has lost multiple class action suits based on soldiers claiming loss of hearing due to the performance of the hearing protection. Of course it is not illegal to not allow training materials to be provided. Nor is illegal for an organization to utilize a product in an unsafe manner. In retrospect, my former employer would have been wise to put terms on how the product would and would not be used.

If it was my company, I would most certainly demand that my product not be used for various activities that are considered legal. Including but certainly not limited to any foreign country access. Any spying on US citizens. No data gathering, analysis or any other weasel words lawyers and politicians would use to try to deny that it is spying.

I would actually deny selling any product to the US government based on the fact that the US government has used this to coerce businesses to do such things as force its employees to take an inadequately tested shot, hire based on minority status, choose suppliers based on the preferred status of the US government, manufacture in foreign lands, provide your product to foreign governments….

A debate based on pretending the US government cares about legality of its actions is participating in play acting.

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Fair enough. Now, how would you enforce that? Ask the US government to take action against itself? Unless one happened to be a very major donor to the Democrat Crime Party, there is no point in seeking “justice” from the US Deep State.

Your former employer should certainly have hired a more expensive Democrat-connected lawyer to put explicit provisions into the sales contract that the purchaser (US gov) assumed responsibility for any problems resulting from the use or misuse of the product. And that would be a useful practice for any manufacturer selling to any customer.

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Anthropic is being unreasonable especially about autonomous systems:

The standoff traces back to February, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a deadline to grant the Pentagon unrestricted use of the company’s Claude AI model for “all lawful purposes.” Amodei refused to lift two safeguards: prohibitions on using Claude for mass domestic surveillance and for fully autonomous weapons systems without human oversight. “We cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” Amodei said.

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Why is this unreasonable?

We don’t have some obligation to perform for the government.

I just gave a real example of a corporation being sued when people may have been harmed. A fully autonomous weapon gone wrong and people die and now this company finds itself being bankrupt by lawsuits.

Contrary to @Gavin’s suggestion that you can somehow create a piece of paper that protects you from being sued to death, the reality is that the scumbag lawyers will sue you in Louisiana or some other jurisdiction that is horrible. The government will actually do its best to insure that the evil corporation be punished for the problem created by the government.

If you want an example of this, my former employer is also getting sued by various entities on PFAS (more commonly called forever chemicals). When the company became concerned about a specific PFAS based on its own testing with Monkeys. It’s own consulting with experts outside the company. It went to the government and said we are concerned that even though you don’t have any regulations that we are violating, we have data that makes us concerned. The government agreed to letting the company stop production of this specific PFAS within five years which was done. This was 25 years ago (roughly).

The first entity to sue was the State of Minnesota

When a corporation is sued by a government, it has to decide do we man up against the near infinite resources of a government that could care less how much tax dollars it wastes or do we get an agreement.

Given the State of Minnesota won a big settlement, other governments come out of the woodwork to get a piece of the action.

Meanwhile, the Federal Legislature holds hearings. The title of those hearings is “The Devil They Knew”. With such an unbiased hearing where our legislators walked out while the representative of my former employer was testifying, no data matters. It’s a witch hunt.

The next thing the Federal government did was create a regulation that put the allowable limit of PFAS in the parts per trillion. Check this out versus say a heavy metal in your drinking water.

The legal system is broke in this country. There is no attempt at justice or fairness. Tort law is a joke. Our government is a joke.

Count me biased. At least five thousand employees have been fired from my former employer as it tries to come up with the funds to pay the lawsuits.

By the way, PFAS chemicals are critical to a variety of life saving products. Including those N95 respirators that the government said stops viruses. You can go determine whether 3M will make that claim. Why not? Because they k ow they will get more lawsuits from people that catch a virus.

Another life saving use is for fire suppression. The US government demands that 3M provide this material to the US navy. Does anyone know how to make a PFAS without making a PFAS.

Unreasonable is when a person, a corporation or anyone is pressured to do what these turds in the swamp want.

What is unreasonable is for citizens to back the turds in the swamp over its fellow citizens

I wouldn’t trust Pete to be alone with my sister and he may be just an average turd.

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Got to agree with you there, Mettelus. But take it a step further – why is the legal system so worthless, and actually damaging to the citizenry?

The answer obviously is that the Heart of Darkness is in our thoroughly unrepresentative Congress, where a near-permanent Political Class ignores We the People, looks out for itself and for those who are enriching them, and tilts the board so that they are almost impossible to replace via “elections”.

Universal suffrage representative democracy has failed. The only realistic way that can be fixed is through collapse. The Soviet Union managed to collapse without a whole lot of bloodshed, although the people did have a miserable couple of decades. Will we be so lucky? Because collapse is near-certain.

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Correct, and the buyer can declare an uncooperative seller as persona non grata or, more specifically, a “supply chain risk.” That’s what actually happened, which resulted in “requiring defense contractors to certify they do not use Claude in military work.” Both buyer and seller can refuse the transaction. Your real-life example is not analogous to the facts of this case.

No one is making such a claim and it is not at issue in this case. The government is refusing to use this supplier. The government acting lawfully with a product they aren’t buying is not a logically consistent concern since it can’t be unlawful with a product it is not using.

Perhaps you were confused by Mr Luckey’s point, which I quoted. If so, take care to read what I wrote in connection with that:

To paraphrase you, a debate based on pretending a couple of random plutocrats cares about legality of their actions is participating in play acting.

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Whether you like it or not, anyone under the jurisdiction of a sovereign may have such an obligation. That goes to the very definition of the word sovereign. Anyone who does not understand this is, to coin a phrase, participating in libertarian play acting. If you want a good laugh, do a search in YouTube for “sovereign citizen.”

More germane to this discussion, during wartime the government has compelled producers in the past. The current regime allows this under the Defense Production Act of 1950. I don’t have to like it but closing my eyes or stamping my foot won’t make it go away. As an aside, that’s not what’s going on in the Anthropic case at all.

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We talked bout this, as I recall, a few years ago. Then, as now, I cite Dmitry Orlov, ‘collapse’ expert.. The most important distinction he drew was based on the fact that Russians were quite used to getting by and making do with minimal stuff; that housing was state owned, so no one was dispossessed of housing. I can’t quite bring myself to conduct the thought experiment of what happens in a nation of more than 300 million of the very entitled when all the supply chains break.

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The answer to the question “Country X survived event Y, can’t we?” is always “No!” Because Country X had the US to bail them out or otherwise protect them from the consequences of Y.

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