Anduril, the Silicon Valley defense startup that’s made a splash as a finalist in the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, now aims to get into the space business, as well.
The company announced a partnership with fellow startup Apex on Oct. 1; aiming to build payloads for Apex’s configurable satellite buses and to become a systems integrator for the platform.
In a conference call with reporters, both Anduril’s top space executive, Gokul Subramanian, and Apex Chief Executive, Ian Cinnamon, made clear that they are interested in helping the Pentagon and intelligence community to proliferate their satellite constellations.
“We believe in more mass in space,” said Subramanian. “We believe in higher quantity, higher volume, lower cost systems, and doing more and more autonomous processing in space.”
Cinnamon also called for “getting more attritable mass to orbit, getting a higher volume of systems out, and at an incredibly faster pace than we’re historically used to.”
Subramanian declined to name specific programs or opportunities of interest to Anduril, but given that Apex’s satellite buses are intended for low-Earth orbit, one likely target is the Space Force’s Space Development Agency. SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, now under construction, will be a network of small satellites in low-Earth orbit, comprised of satellites for both data transport and missile warning and tracking.
“We’re a big believer in what the Space Development Agency is doing,” Subramanian said. “With regard to which missions we’ll go after, I’m not ready to disclose that yet, but … we are going to compete on missions where we feel like Anduril can provide a superior solution or a real advantage to the customer.”
In a release, Anduril noted that it wants to deliver “rapid capability” in areas like “space situational awareness, proliferated LEO architectures, and missile warning and tracking.”
Subramanian told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the firm intends to compete for work from the entirety of the Space Force and the Intelligence Community.
In doing so, however, the company will face fierce competition, with a host of startups joining well-established prime contractors jockeying for work. SDA’s entire program is designed to leverage that competition, and it has so far awarded contracts to 10 vendors for its proliferated architecture.
SDA is also moving fast, awarding deals for the program’s first two tranches and having already released a notice to industry about Tranche 3.
Anduril thinks it can start competing for contracts faster by leveraging Apex’s architecture and by focusing on “missionized systems, software on unique payloads, all of those things,” Subramanian said.
The two companies collaborated on an Anduril payload for an Apex satellite in March; Subramanian described the payload as a “mission data processor,” giving the satellite edge processing capability.
“What we aim to prove is the ability for us to take images using the cameras that the spacecraft had, those were not provided by us, process those images, and we can do all sorts of on-orbit processing, actually manipulate the image on orbit, understand what we’re seeing and what we’re not seeing, and then downlink that data down to earth,” Subramanian said.
The firm’s core autonomy software, Lattice, provides command and control for the satellite, directing it where to move, where to focus its sensors, and how to process the data.
In 2025, Anduril plans to launch a satellite procured from Apex and upgraded with mission data processing and “infrared imaging capabilities,” according to a release.
Besides satellites, Anduril is also wading into other space business. On Sept. 27, Space Systems Command awarded the company a $25 million contract to create a mesh network for the Space Surveillance Network, the group of radar and optical sensors used to monitor thousands of objects in orbit.
“Traditionally, those systems have had a single way to communicate,” Subramanian said. “Those tend to be slow, they can be fragile, and what we’re doing is augmenting them with multiple modalities of communication … and offering our mesh networking technology to enable that data to get off the site, off the sensor site, and to where it needs to go.”
Founded in 2017 and backed by venture capital, Anduril initially focused on autonomous systems and accompanying software. More recently, it has made an aggressive push into multiple markets. In addition to its well-publicized work on CCAs, Anduril unveiled a new “family” of low-cost cruise missiles in September. The company is also working on an unmanned autonomous underwater vehicle, solid rocket motor supply, and a reusable autonomous air vehicle for ground defense.