Joining us now in an exclusive interview
is Palmer Lucky, Anduril founder.
Palmer, it's great to have you back on.
It's Peter glad to be back on. So, I
want to start right there with these
milestones and specifically, we got to
work on this name. YF-Q-44A,
which is your collaborative combat
aircraft for the Air Force, just had a
maiden flight on Halloween. How
significant is this milestone and
perhaps even more importantly, what does
this mean in terms of production now?
Well, it's a huge milestone for us
because this is, you know, an autonomous
fighter. You push a button to tell it to
take off and it goes off and it performs
the rest of the mission. And that's
exactly what we just demonstrated at the
first flight. You don't have someone
who's flying this thing from a remote
control. You don't have a person telling
you what to do. It It does what you told
it to do ahead of time and it just goes
down and executes on that mission.
In terms of the name, you know, the so Y
is a designation for a production
representative prototype. F is for
fighter. Q is for unmanned. 44 is a
designation and A is for alpha. So, the
actual name of the aircraft when it's in
full production is going to just be the
F-Q-44.
But for this initial demonstrator,
you're right, it's the YF-Q-44A.
Yeah. And you're also expanding
internationally. You just opened this
factory in Australia. We're seeing
defense spending grow not just here
stateside, but globally as well. How
does this position you?
Well, the thing that the the YF-Q-44A
and the Ghost Shark have in common is
that we've built these factories that
are able to manufacture both of them at
very large scale using largely
autonomous manufacturing processes.
They're very simple to set up. We're
designing products that can be made at
scale at a price that is much cheaper
than a lot of these legacy programs. And
in both cases, we've gone from initial
concept to production in extremely very
very short period of time. Like the the
F-Q-44, we went from selection to first
flight in 556 days. That's the fastest a
fighter program has moved in decades.
With the Ghost Shark in Australia, we've
in less than 3 years gone from the
initial contract to real production
robotic submarines coming off of our
line in Sydney. That is extraordinarily
fast and I hope that the rest of the
industry can try to take notes from us
and do things in a similar way. So,
along those lines, and I say this
knowing there's an information article
just a couple weeks ago about the cash
burn at Anduril. As you do stand up all
of these factories and you do scale all
of this production, can you build and
deliver to the military what it needs
when it needs it?
Absolutely. And one of the reasons we
want to spend our own money is because
it allows us to move so much faster than
relying on the government to pay for
everything. I mean, one good example of
that is the government shutdown right
now. I'm sure they're going to work it
out in the long run, but right now,
Anduril is still moving through full
throttle. All our test sites are
operational. All of our programs are
running. All of our products are still
moving forward. And it's the same thing
with our factories. I mean, the F-Q-44
factory, which is going to start turning
out Furries next year, production
Furries.
We We started building that before we
even won the contract because we were so
confident that if we won the contract,
we were desperately going to need it.
And if we didn't win it, we'd be able to
use it for making our other products.
And so, look, we're we're burning a lot
of money, but it is being put to very
very efficient use. We're not burning
money on nap pods. We're not burning
money on on
you know, having parties. We're burning
money building factories that the United
States desperately needs for its
national security. All right. So, if
we're So, if we're talking about
spending though, we had Palantir down
today despite another really strong
quarter.
There's concerns. There's debate at
least among investors
that an a bubble is potentially
inflating across this AI ecosystem with
all the money that is being spent. How
do you see it?
Well, Anduril is interesting because
we're the AI company that kind of
preempted a lot of this AI hype. The The
name Anduril Industries, the acronym
acronym is AI. And 8 years ago, we
couldn't even talk about that because AI
was seen as this technology of the
future, never something that was
actually going to work. Now, AI is the
hottest thing ever. Look, AI powers all
of our systems. The F-Q-44 has a Lattice
brain. The Ghost Shark has a Lattice
brain. All of our systems are running on
our Lattice AI brains that powers all of
our stuff. But I think that we're very
different from a lot of these other AI
companies in that AI is not the product.
It's just the thing that makes the
product work. I'm not selling AI
software. I'm not selling an AI brain.
I'm selling fighter jets. I'm selling
submarines. I'm selling missiles. I'm
selling heads-up displays. I'm selling
rifles. I'm selling force fields that
happen to be powered by AI. So, I think
it's just it's a very very different
category than a lot of these other AI
companies. And there's a world where
where where this is a bubble. There's a
world where it's not. I got to admit,
I'm not really a finance person. I'm a
techno head. I type on the computer
really really well. It's your job to
tell us if it's a bubble or not. Okay.
So, let's shift gears here a little bit
because just a couple weeks ago,
conditional approval from the Office of
the Comptroller of the Currency for
another startup. So, So, media reports
tell me Aerobor. Tell me about it.
I think it's a little too early to talk
much about it, but as you know, I've
been working on a side project to build
a bank that is extremely reliable, not
really to build a bank that startups
like
to build a to build a bank that is the
type of bank that defense startups need,
that technology startups need. A lot of
the people You know, when when when
Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, it almost
took a lot of companies with them.
The existing market is not really doing
what needs to be done. And it's a little
too early for me to be out there
shilling. We have a We have a
preliminary conditional approval. So, I
I think right now, I'm funding all of
the operations myself. I think at some
point in the future, there'll be
there'll be more to say. But the bottom
line is, the US used to have banks that
were in the business of holding your
money and helping companies succeed. And
too many of them have forgotten that
their job is not to be cute and
financialize everything to the nth
degree even at the expense of their
customers.