Defense technology firm Anduril Industries announced on May 13, 2026 that it has closed a $5 billion Series H funding round at a $61 billion post-money valuation, led by returning investors Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. The round more than doubles the $30.5 billion valuation Anduril secured just under a year earlier when Founders Fund led a $2.5 billion round.
A defense unicorn that keeps doubling
Anduril said the new capital will fund manufacturing expansion, research and development, and infrastructure tied to autonomous aircraft, drones, missile systems, air defense and AI-powered command-and-control platforms. CEO Brian Schimpf wrote in a blog post that the company more than doubled revenue in 2025 to $2.2 billion, while also nearly doubling its employee headcount. Anduril has now raised more than $11 billion since its 2017 founding.
Why investors keep writing nine-figure checks
The Series H comes as venture capital pours into the defense sector at an unprecedented pace. "When we founded Anduril in 2017, defense was not a category that attracted significant venture investment. That has changed meaningfully over the last several years," Schimpf wrote. Recent peer rounds underscore the trend: Shield AI raised $1.5 billion in March at a $12.7 billion valuation, while Europe's Helsing is reportedly closing in on a $1.2 billion round at roughly an $18 billion valuation.
From Lattice software to Golden Dome contracts
Anduril has stacked up large contract wins in recent weeks. The company said it is part of a consortium awarded a contract to develop the U.S. "Golden Dome" space-based missile defense shield, and it also secured a U.S. Army deal for battle-manager software built on its Lattice platform, plus a contract win from the Dutch Ministry of Defense. Anduril additionally secured a potential 10-year, $20 billion contract vehicle to streamline procurement of its commercial IT platforms by U.S. military and government customers.
Defense procurement is broadening, not narrowing
Despite the size of the round, the Department of Defense is signaling it will not lock itself into a single rising-star vendor. Earlier this year the Air Force chose Shield AI's software to work with Anduril's Fury autonomous fighter jet, dividing the hardware and software portions across competing startups. That competitive split mirrors the Pentagon's broader push to spread autonomous-systems contracts across multiple vendors as it scales drone and counter-drone procurement. For more context on the Pentagon's surging autonomy spend, see our recent coverage of the $500M Perennial Autonomy counter-drone deal and the broader 200,000-drone DoD buying surge.
Where the round positions Anduril
At $61 billion, Anduril is now one of the most valuable private defense companies in the world, sitting alongside SpaceX in the upper tier of dual-use technology unicorns. The valuation reflects a market that has decisively repriced defense tech amid surging U.S. and allied procurement budgets — a re-rating also visible in the public markets, where new entrants like Matternet and others are tapping investors for fresh capital. Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf said the company will continue to scale toward dual-use applications across air, land, sea and space domains.
Reporting based on coverage from TechCrunch and Anduril's own May 13, 2026 announcement.