Anduril Industries, Inc. is an American defense technology company that specializes in autonomous systems. It was cofounded in 2017 by inventor and entrepreneur Palmer Luckey and others. Anduril aims to sell systems to the U.S. Department of Defense that will incorporate artificial intelligence and robotics. Anduril's major products include unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and counter-UAS (CUAS), semi-portable autonomous surveillance systems, and networked command and control software.

Anduril Industries is named for Andúril, the fictional sword of Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings. Translated from the novels' constructed language Quenya, the name means Flame of the West.

In June 2014, Palmer Luckey, the creator of the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, attended a retreat on Sonora Island, British Columbia, hosted by Founders Fund, an early Oculus investor. Luckey met Trae Stephens, 30, who had recently been persuaded to leave Palantir and join Founders Fund by its leader, Peter Thiel. Luckey and Stephens discovered a shared interest in seeking defense contracts for companies built like tech startups. "Stephens found it ridiculous that almost no venture-backed companies worked closely with the government; with its billions of dollars to spend", aside from Palantir and SpaceX. Founders Fund was also an early SpaceX investor. "Stephens' goal was to fund a company to join that duo", but found it difficult to accomplish in Silicon Valley.

In 2015, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security opened Silicon Valley offices. "In 2017, as part of an initiative that had begun the previous year, the Defense Department unveiled the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, known as Project Maven, to harness the latest AI research into battlefield technology, starting with a project to improve image recognition for drones operating in the Middle East."

The idea for a software startup in the realm of high-technology military applications was raised by Stephens and some of his colleagues at Palantir. After the 2016 presidential election, Stephens was appointed to the Defense transition team and later joined the Defense Innovation Board, a central part of a reform effort spearheaded by Ashton Carter, defense secretary under President Obama. Stephens, who was also looking for a defense startup Founders Fund could invest in, began to recruit employees for Anduril alongside Luckey, who was looking to make use of the money he obtained from selling Oculus VR to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion.

Luckey left Facebook in March 2017, alleging he had been fired for his pro-Trump beliefs, which Facebook denies. Stephens and Luckey recruited employees from Palantir and Oculus, and planned to employ Luckey's developmental approach with the Oculus headset to combine low-cost hardware components with sophisticated software. Luckey thought this would be easy because, he said, "the defense industry has been stagnant for decades".

Anduril was incorporated in June 2017 and seeded by Founders Fund. There were at least four founders: Stephens, Luckey, Matt Grimm, and Joe Chen. Brian Singerman led a seed funding round. Luckey, Stephens, and Grimm pitched their company to the directors of Palantir. One of them, Brian Schimpf, decided to join, and became the fifth co-founder (and CEO)."

In June 2017, Anduril executives contacted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) California office to pitch low-cost border security. The DHS introduced them to border officials. The San Diego Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) office eventually paid Anduril to test a new border system.