Anduril, a technology start-up that designs autonomous systems and weapons for government agencies and the military, plans to build a $1 billion factory in Columbus, Ohio, the company said on Thursday.
It said the factory, called Arsenal-1 and described as a “hyperscale” plant, would bring more than 4,000 job to Ohio and eventually produce tens of thousands of autonomous systems and weapons each year.
“We will be creating with our partners in Ohio something that does not currently exist” at such a scale, Anduril’s chief strategy officer, Chris Brose, said in a briefing with reporters. The company has worked closely with state officials on the project and has secured tax breaks to locate it in Columbus.
Anduril, based in Costa Mesa, Calif., is among a new wave defense start-ups working to build autonomous systems and weapons for the military using the latest artificial intelligence technologies. They includes flying drones, underwater vessels and surveillance towers that could be deployed along national borders or on a battlefield.
As A.I. technology began to mature at Silicon Valley, companies like Google in the late 2010s and some tech executives, workers and venture capitalists kept the Pentagon at arm’s length. But others, including Anduril and its co-founder Palmer Luckey, a former Facebook executive, began building A.I. start-ups specifically for the defense market.
The Pentagon, in the last several years, has struggled to find a way to rapidly expand its capacity to produce large numbers of autonomous, weaponized drones. The need has become much more urgent given the use of these tools during the war in Ukraine and efforts by China to mass-produce its own military drones.
The Defense Department started a Replicator Initiative in 2023 to try to accelerate production, but limited new funding and manufacturing capacity have slowed its progress.
Attitudes toward this type of defense work have shifted in Silicon Valley, with myriad start-ups and tech giants working with the Pentagon on both A.I. software and hardware.
Anduril’s new factory will be near Rickenbacker International Airport. Initially, the plant will focus on making the company’s Fury and Roadrunner drones and its Barracuda autonomous missiles, Mr. Brose said.
When completed, the factory will span five million square feet. An additional 500 acres is available for expansion, the company said.
Mr. Brose acknowledged that the plant’s annual production of autonomous systems and weapons was unlikely to reach tens of thousands for several years. Anduril already operates factories in Rhode Island, Mississippi, Georgia and Australia.
