Anduril Bets On Israel

Palmer Luckey's $61 billion defense unicorn — the self-described "radical Zionist" founder — is setting up local operations, hunting engineers, and writing checks into Israeli defense-tech.

By Ronn Torossian

Anduril is coming to Israel. The $61 billion American defense unicorn — the company Palmer Luckey built after Facebook bought Oculus — is in active talks to hire a local lead, stand up a development operation, and invest in Israeli defense-tech startups, Calcalist reported Sunday.

This is not a courtesy visit. This is infrastructure.

Recent meetings have already pulled candidates from Elbit Systems and the Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D) at Israel's Ministry of Defense. The mandate for the new local manager: build relationships with Israeli startups, source partnerships, surface acquisition targets.

Anduril raised $5 billion last month — led by Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital, the Josh Kushner firm — at a $61 billion valuation. A year earlier, the company was worth $30 billion. Revenue hit $2.2 billion in 2025. Headcount: roughly 7,000, up from 90 in 2019. Alongside Palantir, Anduril is the rare startup that crossed over into the U.S. defense establishment as a primary supplier.

Luckey, who has publicly called himself a "radical Zionist," visited Israel in February. The trip was organized by Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital — one of Anduril's earliest backers — and included a private meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (For the full conviction backstory and biography, see Palmer Luckey: The Radical Zionist.)

DDR&D walked Luckey through ten Israeli defense-tech startups during the visit — Smart Shooter (since gone public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange), Kela, Oz, Skana Robotics, Regulus, Magnus Metal, eyesAtop, AriEV, and others. Deals followed. ASIO is now slated to supply components for Anduril's unmanned aerial systems. Anduril has also signaled interest in LiteVision, a drone-camera startup in the Kinetica VC portfolio — already backed by 8VC, the early Palantir investor that also funds Anduril.

"Israel is the most logical place for Anduril to be," Yitz Applbaum, chairman of Kinetica, told Calcalist. "They are interested in investing in startups here, acquiring companies, and potentially, down the road, selling to Israel's defense industry and the IDF."

Why It Matters

Anduril doesn't enter a market. It anchors one.

Palantir's Tel Aviv office reshaped Israeli enterprise software hiring for a decade. An Anduril footprint in Israel would do the same on the defense side — but faster, and with more capital. The company is in war-economy posture in the U.S. The talent it needs — autonomy, edge AI, sensor fusion, drone counter-measures, robotics — is concentrated in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and the corridor around the IDF's Unit 8200 and Unit 81 alumni networks.

For Israeli founders, the calculus is straightforward. Anduril is the buyer of record for next-generation Western defense systems. A check, a partnership, or a tuck-in acquisition from Anduril is a fast track to U.S. Department of Defense pipelines that Israeli startups have historically had to navigate through Lockheed, RTX, or Boeing — slowly.

For Israel, a self-described radical Zionist running a $61 billion American defense company — with Netanyahu access, Kushner-adjacent capital, and a stated intent to build locally — is a different kind of strategic asset than another VC office on Rothschild Boulevard.

The Israeli defense-tech sector spent 2024 and 2025 absorbing global capital faster than any vertical except cyber. Anduril showing up — physically, with payroll — is the signal that the boom is no longer episodic.

It's structural.

Related — The Luckey Franchise

• Palmer Luckey: The Radical Zionist — The conviction backstory: Oculus, the Facebook firing, Anduril, and the doctrine.

Ronn Torossian is the founder and chairman of 5W AI Communications, the AI Communications Firm. He is the publisher of Everything-PR and the author of two best-selling editions of For Immediate Release.