Palmer Luckey’s defense-tech company is currently involved in a significant funding round led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. This comes less than a year after the company’s Series G round, which closed in June with $2.5 billion at a $30 billion valuation. Lux Capital and Founders Fund are also expected to participate.
A Bloomberg report noted that the new round could bring up to $8 billion into the company, following the previous funding round last summer.
This funding occurs amidst challenges for defense startups. A contract dispute involving Anthropic and the Pentagon has led the U.S. government to cancel all its contracts with the AI company, with Secretary of Defense Hegseth considering labeling the company as a supply chain risk.
While not explicitly backing this designation, Luckey has supported the government’s position. In a recent X post, Luckey stated, “At the end of the day, you have to believe that our imperfect constitutional republic is still good enough to run a country without outsourcing the real levers of power to billionaires and corpos and their shadow advisors.”