Anduril has raised $5 billion and doubled its value to $61 billion, the defense tech company said on Wednesday. Its CEO shared some thoughts on the future of warfare.
Founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey and four cofounders, Anduril’s mission is to modernize the US military and develop autonomous weapons that it says “will save Western civilization.”
It was valued at just over $30 billion in June 2025. The company, which has secured Pentagon contracts, is considered an IPO candidate in the not-too-distant future. Its latest funding round was led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
Alongside the funding announcement, Brian Schimpf, Anduril’s CEO, shared the letter he sent to investors in January, laying out how Anduril believes the nature of conflict will change.
“We are publishing the letter publicly because these issues extend well beyond any one company,” Schimpf said. Here are four of his predictions.
1. The future of war is software-heavy
Schimpf said AI and autonomy are changing the meaning of military scale, with future conflicts favoring forces that can coordinate large numbers of connected, software-enabled systems rather than rely only on the most expensive weapons.
That is central to Anduril’s pitch. The company’s autonomous drones and vehicles are underpinned by its software platform, Lattice OS, a digital command-and-control center that uses AI to integrate data from drones, cameras, sensors, and radar systems.
“Future conflicts will be decided by the ability to generate targeting faster, deliver effects at range in volume, and deny the same to our adversaries,” Schimpf told investors.
That requires a “distributed, software-defined system for sensing, targeting, and strike,” that can be continuously updated rather than “locked into configurations for thirty-year service lives.”
In other words, software will be central to how militaries find targets, coordinate weapons, survive attacks, and adapt in real time.
2. Hiding will be harder, making the deep sea more important
Schimpf said autonomous advances in sensing will make it “nearly impossible” for militaries to conceal activity across air, ground, and surface domains.
That shift will make the deep-sea a rare domain where sensing remains difficult, he said, adding that underwater operations would become “disproportionately important.”
Above ground, militaries will need to improve mass (the concentration of combat power), dispersion, and resilience to survive in environments where they are more easily detected and targeted, said Schimpf.
3. Alliance structures are going to shift
Schimpf told investors that the world had entered a new Cold War period, writing that future conflicts would be “regional and bifurcated.”
“As in the first Cold War, the U.S.-China relationship will likely proceed through a framework of containment and managed competition in which both sides maintain common rules while avoiding open conflict,” Schimpf said.
China’s military buildup and the US prioritizing hemispheric defense will force allies to take more responsibility for regional deterrence, and alliance structures will shift, said Schimpf.
He pointed to multiple defense assessments that predict 2027 as “a window of maximum danger with China,” when Beijing may assess it has sufficient capability and opportunity to act.
4. Future conflicts will be won by the ability to produce at scale
Deterrence will depend on how quickly countries can rebuild combat power and turn technological advances into military capability at scale, said Schimpf. “The side that adapts fastest shapes the terms of competition,” he said.
That doesn’t mean mass-producing poor-quality weaponry.
Instead, Schimpf said future conflicts will require “intelligent mass,” which he described as “a mix of high-end and scalable systems that combine precision with producibility.”
Intelligent, networked mass will replace the industrial-age attrition of previous centuries, he said.
To meet that demand, the production timeline for lower-end capabilities must shrink from decades to months or years, Schimpf wrote, arguing that the traditional defense-industrial model — built around low-rate production of exquisite platforms over decades — “does not make sense today.”
