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 announced Thursday.
It said the plant, called Arsenal-1 and described as a “hyperscale” plant, would bring more than 4,000 jobs to Ohio and eventually produce tens of thousands of autonomous systems and weapons each year.
“We’re going to create with our partners in Ohio something that doesn’t exist right now” on that scale, Anduril chief strategy officer Chris Brose said in a briefing with reporters. The company has worked closely with state officials on the project and secured tax breaks to locate it in Columbus.
Anduril, based in Costa Mesa, California, is one of the new defense startups working to build autonomous systems and weapons for the military using the latest artificial intelligence technologies. They include flying drones, submarines and surveillance towers that could be deployed along national borders or on a battlefield.
As AI technology began to mature in 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 co-founder Palmer Luckey, a former Facebook executive, began creating AI startups specifically for the defense market.
The Pentagon, for the past several years, has struggled to find a way to rapidly expand its ability to produce large numbers of autonomous, armed drones. The need has become much more pressing given the use of these tools during the war in Ukraine and China’s efforts to mass-produce its own military drones.
The Department of Defense launched a Replicator Initiative in 2023 to try to speed up production, but limited new funding and production capacity have slowed its progress.
Attitudes toward this kind of defense work have changed in Silicon Valley, with myriad startups and tech giants working with the Pentagon on both AI software and hardware.
Anduril’s new plant will be located near Rickenbacker International Airport. Initially, the plant will focus on making the company’s Fury and Roadrunner drones and Barracuda autonomous missiles, Mr. Bros.
When completed, the plant will span five million square feet. An additional 500 acres are available for expansion, the company said.
Mr. Brose acknowledged that the plant’s annual output of autonomous systems and weapons was unlikely to reach the tens of thousands for several years. Anduril already operates plants in Rhode Island, Mississippi, Georgia and Australia.
