<p id="speakable-summary" class="wp-block-paragraph">The U.S. Army said late Friday that it has signed <a href="https://www.war.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/4434754/contracts-for-march-13-2026/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">a 10-year contract</a> with defense tech startup <a href="https://www.anduril.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Anduril</a>. The deal could be worth up to $20 billion.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">According to the <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/291074/u_s_army_awards_enterprise_contract_for_it_commercial_solutions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">announcement</a>, the contract starts with a five-year “base period,” with the option to extend the deal for an additional five years, and it includes Anduril hardware, software, infrastructure, and services.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Army describes the agreement as a single enterprise contract consolidating what had been “more than 120 separate procurement actions for Anduril’s commercial solutions.” </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“The modern battlefield is increasingly defined by software,” said Gabe Chiulli, the chief technology officer at the Department of Defense’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, in a statement. “To maintain our advantage, we must be able to acquire and deploy software capabilities with speed and efficiency.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Anduril was co-founded by Palmer Luckey, who was previously known for selling VR startup Oculus to Facebook (now Meta). <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/30/palmer-luckey-facebook/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Facebook fired Luckey</a> after controversy erupted following a news report that he’d donated to a pro-Trump political group.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Luckey has repeatedly insisted that the media misrepresented his political views, but according to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/technology/pentagon-anduril-palmer-luckey.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">recent feature in The New York Times</a>, Luckey and Anduril have been embraced by the second Trump administration, thanks to his vision for remaking the U.S. military with autonomous fighter jets, drones, submarines, and more. The company (named, like Palantir, for a magical object in “The Lord of the Rings”) brought in around $2 billion in revenue last year, the NYT says.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Separate reports suggest that <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/03/anduril-aims-at-60-billion-valuation-in-new-funding-round/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Anduril is in talks to raise a new funding round</a> at a $60 billion valuation. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This announcement also comes as the Department of Defense is locked in a dispute with Anthropic, with <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/09/anthropic-sues-defense-department-over-supply-chain-risk-designation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the AI company suing the DoD</a> over its designation as a supply chain threat following a failed contract negotiation, while OpenAI has faced consumer backlash and <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/07/openai-robotics-lead-caitlin-kalinowski-quits-in-response-to-pentagon-deal/">at least one executive departure</a> after signing a Pentagon deal of its own.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In <a href="https://x.com/palmerluckey/status/2027500334999081294" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">a post on X</a>, Luckey argued that Anthropic’s attempt to draw red lines around the use of AI in autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance is “an untenable position that the United States cannot possibly accept.”</p>
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