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Joining us now in an exclusive interview
is Palmer Lucky, Anduril founder.

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Palmer, it's great to have you back on.

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It's Peter glad to be back on. So,
I want to start right there with these

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milestones and specifically, we got to

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work on this name. YF-Q-44A,

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which is your collaborative combat
aircraft for the Air Force, just had a

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maiden flight on Halloween.
How significant is this milestone and

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perhaps even more importantly, what does
this mean in terms of production now?

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Well, it's a huge milestone for us
because this is, you know, an autonomous

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fighter. You push a button to tell it to
take off and it goes off and it performs

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the rest of the mission. And that's
exactly what we just demonstrated at the

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first flight. You don't have someone
who's flying this thing from a remote

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control. You don't have a person telling
you what to do. It It does what you told

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it to do ahead of time and it just
goes down and executes on that mission.

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In terms of the name, you know,
the so Y is a designation for a production

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representative prototype. F is for
fighter. Q is for unmanned. 44 is a

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designation and A is for alpha. So, the
actual name of the aircraft when it's in

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full production is going
to just be the F-Q-44.

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But for this initial demonstrator,
you're right, it's the YF-Q-44A.

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Yeah. And you're also expanding
internationally. You just opened this

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factory in Australia. We're seeing
defense spending grow not just here

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stateside, but globally as well. How

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does this position you?

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Well, the thing that the the YF-Q-44A

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and the Ghost Shark have in common
is that we've built these factories that

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are able to manufacture both of them
at very large scale using largely

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autonomous manufacturing processes.

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They're very simple to set up. We're
designing products that can be made at

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scale at a price that is much cheaper

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than a lot of these legacy programs. And

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in both cases, we've gone from initial

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concept to production in extremely very

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very short period of time. Like the the
F-Q-44, we went from selection to first

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flight in 556 days. That's the fastest a

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fighter program has moved in decades.

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With the Ghost Shark in Australia,
we've in less than 3 years gone from the

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initial contract to real production

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robotic submarines coming off of our line
in Sydney. That is extraordinarily

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fast and I hope that the rest of the
industry can try to take notes from us

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and do things in a similar way.
So, along those lines, and I say this

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knowing there's an information article
just a couple weeks ago about the cash

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burn at Anduril. As you do stand up all
of these factories and you do scale all

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of this production, can you build
and deliver to the military what it needs

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when it needs it? Absolutely.
And one of the reasons we

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want to spend our own money is because
it allows us to move so much faster than

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relying on the government to pay for
everything. I mean, one good example of

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that is the government shutdown right now.
I'm sure they're going to work it

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out in the long run, but right now,
Anduril is still moving through full

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throttle. All our test sites are
operational. All of our programs are

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running. All of our products are still
moving forward. And it's the same thing

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with our factories. I mean, the F-Q-44
factory, which is going to start turning

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out Furries next year, production Furries.

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We We started building that before we

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even won the contract because we were
so confident that if we won the contract,

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we were desperately going to need it.

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And if we didn't win it, we'd be able
to use it for making our other products.

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And so, look, we're we're burning a lot
of money, but it is being put to very

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very efficient use. We're not burning
money on nap pods. We're not burning

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money on on you know,
having parties. We're burning

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money building factories that the United
States desperately needs for its

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national security. All right. So,
if we're So, if we're talking about

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spending though, we had Palantir down
today despite another really strong

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quarter. There's concerns.
There's debate at

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least among investors that
an a bubble is potentially

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inflating across this AI ecosystem with
all the money that is being spent. How

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do you see it? Well,
Anduril is interesting because

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we're the AI company that kind of
preempted a lot of this AI hype. The The

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name Anduril Industries, the acronym
acronym is AI. And 8 years ago, we

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couldn't even talk about that because
AI was seen as this technology of the

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future, never something that was
actually going to work. Now, AI is the

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hottest thing ever. Look, AI powers all

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of our systems. The F-Q-44 has a Lattice
brain. The Ghost Shark has a Lattice

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brain. All of our systems are running on
our Lattice AI brains that powers all of

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our stuff. But I think that we're very
different from a lot of these other AI

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companies in that AI is not the product.

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It's just the thing that makes
the product work. I'm not selling AI

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software. I'm not selling an AI brain.

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I'm selling fighter jets. I'm selling
submarines. I'm selling missiles. I'm

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selling heads-up displays. I'm selling
rifles. I'm selling force fields that

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happen to be powered by AI. So, I think
it's just it's a very very different

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category than a lot of these other AI
companies. And there's a world where

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where where this is a bubble. There's
a world where it's not. I got to admit,

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I'm not really a finance person.
I'm a techno head. I type on the computer

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really really well. It's your job
to tell us if it's a bubble or not. Okay.

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So, let's shift gears here a little
bit because just a couple weeks ago,

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conditional approval from the Office of

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the Comptroller of the Currency for

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another startup. So, So, media reports

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tell me Aerobor. Tell me about it.

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I think it's a little too early to talk
much about it, but as you know, I've

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been working on a side project to build

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a bank that is extremely reliable,
not really to build a bank that startups

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like to build a to build
a bank that is the

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type of bank that defense startups need,
that technology startups need. A lot of

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the people You know, when when when
Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, it almost

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took a lot of companies with them.

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The existing market is not really doing
what needs to be done. And it's a little

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too early for me to be out there
shilling. We have a We have a

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preliminary conditional approval. So,
I I think right now, I'm funding all of

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the operations myself. I think at some
point in the future, there'll be

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there'll be more to say. But the bottom
line is, the US used to have banks that

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were in the business of holding your money
and helping companies succeed. And

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too many of them have forgotten
that their job is not to be cute and

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financialize everything to the nth degree
even at the expense of their customers.