Latest news with #Anduril
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Palmer Luckey's Anduril leads second quarter surge for venture capital in greater L.A.
Venture capital investments in the Greater Los Angeles region more than doubled to $5.8 billion in the second quarter, compared to a year ago, as investors poured money into the area's defense tech and aerospace companies amid escalating geopolitical tensions. Costa Mesa-based defense tech company Anduril received the most venture capital in the region last quarter, raising a $2.5-billion funding round, according to research firm CB Insights. The company, co-founded by entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, said it would use the money to invest in scaling up its production, hiring, taking big swings on products and capabilities and other efforts such as its mergers and acquisitions strategy. Anduril, which manufactures autonomous weapons systems, was recently awarded a $99.6-million contract to build a next generation command and control prototype for the U.S. Army that it says will help modernize communications on the battlefield. Anduril employs more than 6,000 people and has a valuation of $30.5 billion. Venture capital firm Founders Fund led the recent round with a $1-billion investment, marking the firm's largest check to date, said Founders Fund partner and Anduril executive chairman Trae Stephens in a Bloomberg TV interview in June. The company's recent fundraising round is an example of strong investor interest in defense tech and aerospace, which venture firms believe is ripe for disruption, with startups taking market share from incumbents such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Globally, venture capital investments in defense tech is on the rise. Already, the funding in this category has outpaced last year, according to CB Insights. For the first half of 2025, investors allocated $11.1 billion in venture capital to defense tech companies, compared to $8.2 billion in the full year of 2024, CB Insights said. Investors are eager to jump on an area of growth that has a lot of support from the government, as the U.S. enters a period in which defense and the geopolitical arena is at the forefront, analysts said. The world is being rocked by multiple international conflicts, including Russia's ongoing war on Ukraine and Israel's battle against Hamas in Gaza. 'We're entering an administration, a regulatory period, and a broader geopolitical arena where defense is at the forefront of everyone's minds,' said Jason Saltzman, head of insights at CB Insights. 'We're starting to see a lot of support from the government in particular, with an increasing number of investors hopping on the defense tech train.' Southern California, long an aerospace and defense tech hub, is benefiting from the investor interest, with the area's companies representing nine of the top 30 private businesses globally in defense tech that have received the most venture capital financing, according to CB Insights. Local companies said they were attracted to Southern California because of its strong talent pool, with nearby universities like Caltech and USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Going back to World War II and the Cold War period, key defense contractors like Northrop Grumman and Hughes were built in the South Bay area, making the region a crucial locale for the defense and aerospace industries, said Professor Dan Wadhwani, director of the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the USC Marshall School of Business. As startups build new technologies, they will need to integrate them with other existing systems, he added. 'The proximity to key players within the defense industry makes L.A. a prime place for capitalizing on the growing trends towards defense spending,' he said. Last quarter, defense tech and aerospace companies represented the top four businesses receiving venture capital, according to CB Insights. Anduril led the way, followed by Redondo Beach-based Impulse Space, which raised $300 million, Hawthorne-based Chaos Industries that had a $275-million funding round and L.A.-based spacecraft manufacturer Apex, which raised $200 million in the second quarter, CB Insights said. Chaos Industries makes sensors and radars that provide warning and tracking against unmanned aerial systems, missiles and aircraft. The company, which has more than 100 employees, raised a total of $490 million since it was founded in 2022. The funding will go toward hiring and increasing the company's manufacturing capabilities, said Chief Strategy Officer Will Hurd. Hurd said he remembers when he worked at an investment bank in 2021 and no investors were interested in funding companies where the government was their client because there was a fear or lack of understanding of how that process worked. Now, that's changed and evolved, with a wave of defense tech and aerospace companies, including Chaos Industries. 'Now the adversaries have gotten more sophisticated, and we have to match that,' Hurd said. Impulse Space, which makes space vehicles, said there has been surging customer demand. The company said it has more than 30 signed government and commercial contracts worth nearly $200 million in value and the additional venture capital funding will go toward hiring, scaling production and accelerating its research and development. 'We've proven that we can build fast and fly successfully,' said CEO and founder Tom Mueller in a statement. 'Now, the market is demanding more.'
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Palantir Technologies' (PLTR) Pipeline Bolstered by $100M NGC-2 Contract
Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) is one of the best 52-week high stocks to buy now. On July 21, the stock was a big mover after the company secured a $100 million contract from the US government for the Next-Generation Command and Control (NGC-2) platform prototype. A data extraction engineer assembling a complex integration and configuration. In partnership with Anduril, Palantir is tasked with developing the next phase of NGC-2, one of the US Army's highest-priority projects. Palantir is likely to incorporate its Maven Smart System and Edge Data Mesh into NGC-2. Research firm William Blair expects $30 million of the total contract value to go to Palantir, with potential to increase to more than $150 million in annual recurring revenue over the next three years. Palantir allegedly secured $135 million in annual recurring revenue across nine different contracts in the second quarter compared to just $27 million in the same period last year. Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) is a software company that builds platforms for data integration, analysis, and decision-making. It helps organizations, particularly in government and commercial sectors, make sense of vast amounts of data to solve complex problems. Its platforms, including Gotham, Metropolis, and Foundry, are used for various applications, from national security and law enforcement to financial services and supply chain management. While we acknowledge the potential of PLTR as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 10 Best Biotech Stocks to Buy According to Billionaire Steve Cohen and 11 Growth Stocks That Could Double by 2027. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Palantir Technologies' (PLTR) Pipeline Bolstered by $100M NGC-2 Contract
Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) is one of the best 52-week high stocks to buy now. On July 21, the stock was a big mover after the company secured a $100 million contract from the US government for the Next-Generation Command and Control (NGC-2) platform prototype. A data extraction engineer assembling a complex integration and configuration. In partnership with Anduril, Palantir is tasked with developing the next phase of NGC-2, one of the US Army's highest-priority projects. Palantir is likely to incorporate its Maven Smart System and Edge Data Mesh into NGC-2. Research firm William Blair expects $30 million of the total contract value to go to Palantir, with potential to increase to more than $150 million in annual recurring revenue over the next three years. Palantir allegedly secured $135 million in annual recurring revenue across nine different contracts in the second quarter compared to just $27 million in the same period last year. Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) is a software company that builds platforms for data integration, analysis, and decision-making. It helps organizations, particularly in government and commercial sectors, make sense of vast amounts of data to solve complex problems. Its platforms, including Gotham, Metropolis, and Foundry, are used for various applications, from national security and law enforcement to financial services and supply chain management. While we acknowledge the potential of PLTR as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 10 Best Biotech Stocks to Buy According to Billionaire Steve Cohen and 11 Growth Stocks That Could Double by 2027. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Gizmodo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The People Behind the Most Accurate Game Boy Recreation Are Making an N64
No other company makes the retro gaming scene more onerous than ModRetro. The company behind the ModRetro Chromatic—fronted by the CEO of military contractor Anduril, Palmer Luckey—is at it again, announcing an enticing recreation of the Nintendo 64 meant to hook up to your TV and play all your old cartridges as if it were 1996 all over again. Drooling over this still unrevealed recreation console also requires you to put aside any inhibitions over Luckey's deep ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex and surveillance state. ModRetro's first big hit, the Chromatic, was an FPGA emulation device capable of playing Game Boy and Game Boy Advance cartridges. FPGA stands for field-programmable gate array, which, in layman's terms, means the programmable chip can copy the chip logic of the original device to play these games as accurately as possible. An FPGA Game Boy is far less complex than a console with 3D graphics like the N64. Luckey promoted ModRetro's M64, which will offer 'the best and most authentic way to play your favorite N64 games.' The Anduril founder said the device will cost as much as the Nintendo 64 did at launch—$200. ModRetro's newest product is M64. The best and most authentic way to play your favorite N64 games, bar none. Prepare your wallet and brace your mind. Launches at the same price as the original Nintendo 64. Inflation isn't nostalgic. — Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) July 24, 2025There's a good reason so many retro enthusiasts are enticed by an FPGA Nintendo 64 recreation. Nintendo designed the N64 architecture in such a way that it's more difficult to replicate through software emulation compared to most other gaming consoles. This results in awkward texture mapping in some games, among other graphical glitches that mar the experience. Luckey, always the capitalist, picked up on that demand after Analogue promoted its $250 Analogue3D, another Nintendo 64 FPGA console. That device promises to upscale games to 4K resolution from the N64's native 480×360. It also introduces a full '3Dos,' which will act as a backend to support in-game screenshots, save states, and more. Analogue delayed its device multiple times, most recently pushing the ship date to August. The company blamed Trump tariffs for the shipping issues, although the device still remains sold out anyway. Luckey doesn't actually have a console to show anyone yet. He wrote on X that what was displayed of the M64 was 'real gameplay on real hardware using our real core.' It's unclear if the device is still in the prototyping phase or if the company had to wait for 'final legal checks' before it could show off its recreation hardware. He cheekily referenced AMD in his post, implying the M64 will be using an FPGA chip from the company. The Analogue 3D, instead, bases its design on an Intel 220K LE Altera Cyclone 10GX FPGA. At least Luckey confirmed in a response to The Shortcut's Matt Swider that the M64 will have several different color options, and it will support the original triple-handed N64 controllers as well as a new 'M64 controller.' Like the Analogue3D, the M64 will support 4K resolution. However, the Anduril and ModRetro founder said, 'Upscale is the wrong word for what we're doing.' As with the ModRetro Chromatic, the bigger issue than how well the hardware recreates your favorite childhood moments is how much you want to support a man who unapologetically makes weapon-mounted drones, missiles, and now AR headsets for the U.S. military. Reports from Business Insider and Reuters indicated Luckey plans to get into digital banking, something that may be related to crypto. Let's just imagine a future where, after washing his hands of Oculus and Meta, Luckey instead started making Game Boys instead of weaponized drones.
CNN
22-07-2025
- Business
- CNN
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns of an AI ‘fraud crisis'
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the world may be on the precipice of a 'fraud crisis' because of how artificial intelligence could enable bad actors to impersonate other people. 'A thing that terrifies me is apparently there are still some financial institutions that will accept a voice print as authentication for you to move a lot of money or do something else — you say a challenge phrase, and they just do it,' Altman said. 'That is a crazy thing to still be doing… AI has fully defeated most of the ways that people authenticate currently, other than passwords.' The comments were part of his wide-ranging interview about the economic and societal impacts of AI at the Federal Reserve on Tuesday. He also told the audience, which included, representatives of large US financial institutions, about the role he expects AI to play in the economy. His appearance comes as the White House is expected to release its 'AI Action Plan' in the coming days, a policy document to outline its approach to regulating the technology and promoting America's dominance in the AI space. OpenAI, which provided recommendations for the plan, has ramped up its presence on and around Capitol Hill in recent months. On Tuesday, the company confirmed it will open its first Washington, DC, office early next year to house its approximately 30-person workforce in the city. Chan Park, OpenAI's head of global affairs for the US and Canada, will lead the new office alongside Joe Larson, who is leaving defense technology company Anduril to become OpenAI's vice president of government. The company will use the space to host policymakers, preview new technology, and provide AI trainings, for example, to teachers and government officials. It will also house research into AI's economic impact and how to improve access to the technology. Despite Altman's warnings about the technology's risks, OpenAI has urged the Trump administration to avoid regulation it says could hamper tech companies' ability to compete with foreign AI innovations. Earlier this month, the US Senate voted to strike a controversial provision from Trump's agenda bill that would have prevented states from enforcing AI-related laws for 10 years. Altman isn't alone in worrying that AI will supercharge fraud. The FBI warned about these AI voice and video 'cloning' scams last year. Multiple parents have reported that AI voice technology was used in attempts to trick them out of money by convincing them that their children were in trouble. And earlier this month, US officials warned that someone using AI to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio's voice had contacted foreign ministers, a US governor and a member of Congress. 'I am very nervous that we have an impending, significant, impending fraud crisis,' Altman said. 'Right now, it's a voice call; soon it's going be a video or FaceTime that's indistinguishable from reality,' Altman said. He warned that while his company isn't building such impersonation tools, it's a challenge the world will soon need to confront as AI continues to evolve. Altman is backing a tool called The Orb, built by Tools for Humanity, that says it will offer 'proof of human' in a world where AI makes it harder to distinguish what, and who, is real online. Altman also explained what keeps him up at night: the idea of bad actors making and misusing AI 'superintelligence' before the rest of the world has advanced enough to defend against such an attack — for example, a US adversary using AI to target the American power grid or create a bioweapon. That comment could speak to fears within the White House and elsewhere on Capitol Hill about China outpacing US tech companies on AI. Altman also said he worries about the prospect of humans losing control of a superintelligent AI system, or giving the technology too much decision-making power. Various tech companies, including OpenAI, are chasing AI superintelligence — and Altman has said he thinks the 2030s could bring AI intelligence far beyond what humans are capable of — but it remains unclear how exactly they define that milestone and when, if ever, they'll reach it. But Altman said he's not as worried as some of his peers in Silicon Valley about AI's potential impact on the workforce, after leaders such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy have warned the technology will take jobs. Instead, Altman believes that 'no one knows what happens next.' 'There's a lot of these really smart-sounding predictions,' he said, ''Oh, this is going to happen on this and the economy over here.' No one knows that. In my opinion, this is too complex of a system, this is too new and impactful of a technology, it's very hard to predict.' Still, he does have some thoughts. He said that while 'entire classes of jobs will go away,' new types of work will emerge. And Altman repeated a prediction he's made previously that if the world could look forward 100 years, the workers of the future probably won't have what workers today consider 'real jobs.' 'You have everything you could possibly need. You have nothing to do,' Altman said of the future workforce. 'So, you're making up a job to play a silly status game and to fill your time and to feel useful to other people.' The sentiment seems to be that Altman thinks we shouldn't worry about AI taking jobs because, in the future, we won't really need jobs anyway, although he didn't detail how the future AI tools would, for example, reliably argue a case in court or clean someone's teeth or construct a house. In conjunction with Altman's speech, OpenAI released a report compiled by its chief economist, Ronnie Chatterji, outlining ChatGPT's productivity benefits for workers. In the report, Chatterji — who joined OpenAI as its first chief economist after serving as coordinator of the CHIPS and Science Act in the Biden White House — compared AI to transformative technologies such as electricity and the transistor. He said ChatGPT now has 500 million users globally. Among US users, 20% use ChatGPT as a 'personalized tutor' for 'learning and upskilling,' according to the report, although it didn't elaborate on what kinds of things people are learning through the service. Chatterji also noted that more than half of ChatGPT's American users are between the ages of 18 and 34, 'suggesting that there may be long-term economic benefits as they continue to use AI tools in the workplace going forward.' Over the next year, Chatterji plans to work with economists Jason Furman and Michael Strain on a longer study of AI's impact on jobs and the US workforce. That work will take place in the new Washington, DC, office.
