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<\/p>\nDefense technology company Anduril, best known for building drones and AI-enabled software for the military, is branching out into a new product manufacturing business: laptops.<\/p>\n
The company on Tuesday announced the launch of a computer initiative, dubbed BlueChip, in partnership with wireless tech giant Qualcomm.<\/p>\n
Anduril has already developed \u201cfunctional prototypes\u201d of the laptops, according to a press release. Qualcomm\u2019s Snapdragon X Series will provide the core computing capabilities for the devices, including \u201cgeneral-purpose processing, graphics, and on-device AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
The companies plan to begin taking orders next year.<\/p>\n
The firms touted BlueChip as an effort to boost manufacturing in America and reduce the nation\u2019s reliance on foreign supply chains.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States pioneered personal computing and continues to lead the world in designing advanced technology, but decades of offshoring have left America dependent on foreign manufacturers for the computers and components that power everything from personal devices to critical government infrastructure. This dependence creates a national security vulnerability. Conflict or disruptions to overseas supply chains could limit access to essential computing hardware and undermine America\u2019s ability to sustain production when it matters most,\u201d company officials wrote in the press release.<\/p>\n
The organizations plan to market the tech to government and military customers, among other potential buyers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might sound crazy for a company like Anduril to be doing something like this,\u201d Anduril co-founder and leader Palmer Luckey told reporters ahead of the official announcement.<\/p>\n
However, he suggested that the BlueChip product line isn\u2019t far outside of Anduril\u2019s wheelhouse.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019ve been doing at Anduril, including with Qualcomm, is not actually very different from building a computer. You look at any of our autonomous drones, we\u2019ve got a CPU, a GPU, memory, storage, mainboard, battery, sensors, wireless radios. It\u2019s basically all the same stuff you\u2019d have in any computer. The only difference is the shape and that it has a screen and a keyboard. Even on the display side, actually, we have a number of drones that have status screens, so it\u2019s really not all that different,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
During a call with reporters ahead of the announcement, Luckey declined to say what the production targets are for the new laptops.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not sharing any quantities yet. We\u2019re gonna have a lot more to announce next year. I think it\u2019s really, really tough right now to announce these things. To be totally candid, we\u2019re in an unprecedented time, as it were, for building computers given \u2026 the AI explosion, and so we\u2019re not going into full-rate production until next year. We\u2019re in very early prototyping production. Like, we have a very small line put together, very small quantities of these right now to build out the manufacturing process. But I\u2019m not going to know quantities until we have a little more clarity on the manufacturing side, the vendor supply chain side. There\u2019s a lot of moving pieces,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Anduril plans to use its Arsenal-1 facility in Ohio \u2014 where it\u2019s also building autonomous drones for the Air Force\u2019s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program \u2014 for BlueChip manufacturing.<\/p>\n
Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm, told reporters during the call that chips for the laptops will be made at a TSMC facility in Arizona.<\/p>\n
Luckey added that the companies also have \u201csome stuff going on\u201d in California related to the effort, though he didn\u2019t provide details.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s certainly going to end up being other facilities. This is another one of those things where it\u2019s still in flux, exactly which facility is going to do which step. So, I can\u2019t get into as much detail as I\u2019d like,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Luckey noted that, while the laptop will be the first product in the BlueChip line, the companies\u2019 vision is to expand the offerings and it\u2019s \u201cvery likely\u201d that some of those will be made at other facilities.<\/p>\n
Currently, the laptop\u2019s bill of materials is about 90% from the U.S. and allies, according to Luckey. The aim is to eventually get that number up to 100%.<\/p>\n
Regarding the workforce, the Anduril boss said he\u2019s been \u201cdiverting some of our best people to this project for quite some time,\u201d including those who worked on some of the other offerings that the company is better known for, such as attack drones.<\/p>\n
The U.S. government has not yet provided any subsidies or contracts to Anduril and Qualcomm to develop the laptops, according to Luckey, who noted that the companies have been putting their own R&D dollars into the initiative. He did not disclose how much money is being invested in the effort to get to full-rate production.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d say the worst case here is that this is going to be a low-volume laptop for critical industries and government \u2026 that desperately need something like this to exist. That is a healthy business for Android to run, even if it doesn\u2019t get bigger. I happen to believe it\u2019s going to be much, much, much bigger,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n
Amon noted the AI boom that\u2019s unfolding across the economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when you look at how AI is evolving, computers are also becoming token machines,\u201d he said. \u201cIn addition to what you do with a laptop, it\u2019s going to run models, it\u2019s going to be part of this entire compute fabric that\u2019s going to be running AI. And you\u2019re going to have different ecosystems and needs for [the tech] across different industries. It\u2019s very possible that you\u2019re going to have certain industries \u2026 in addition to the federal government, that will want devices. They have different kinds of requirements and compliance with security and across the supply chain. \u2026 So, I think this could create an interesting opportunity when you think about the addressable market. It\u2019s just a different world going forward when you think about the role of PCs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luckey added that the chips in the new laptop are \u201cextremely good\u201d for AI inference.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe not training large models, but on the inference side, they\u2019re fantastic. And so, I\u2019ve been using my BlueChip laptop to do a whole bunch of local model work where \u2026 I don\u2019t want to \u2014 and actually am not allowed to \u2014 send certain information out into the cloud. And so having devices that can do a really good job of onboard AI inference running local models is actually really, really important,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n
The BlueChip systems are designed for potential military customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is aimed squarely at the defense side of things as the pace-setting element of the design because it\u2019s the most stringent part of the design. So basically I have to design for the military users because they\u2019re the ones that are going to be beating these things up the most. They have the most stringent security requirements, the most stringent environmental requirements, shock and vibration, all of that,\u201d Luckey said.<\/p>\n
For the average individual consumer, the price tag for the extra-rugged devices might not be cost competitive with other laptop offerings on the market, he suggested.<\/p>\n
Anduril has been testing out the BlueChip tech with multiple operating systems, Luckey noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs of right now, we have it running Windows and two particular flavors of Linux that are very popular with the U.S. military to make sure that all the drivers work, make sure that all the applications work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
One of the applications that has been integrated into the BlueChip system is Anduril\u2019s Lattice software platform that serves as the backbone for some of the military\u2019s high-priority modernization initiatives, such as Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s critical that we be able to run Lattice, both the version that processes locally and the version that commands and controls systems that are processing at the edge with Lattice,\u201d Luckey said.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\tWritten by Jon Harper
\n\t\t\tJon Harper is Editor-in-Chief of DefenseScoop. He leads an award-winning team of journalists in providing breaking news and in-depth analysis on military technology and the ways in which it is shaping how the Defense Department operates and modernizes. You can also follow him on X: @Jon_Harper_\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defense technology company Anduril, best known for building drones and AI-enabled software for the military, is branching out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4753,2087,296417,114,161031,85,46,1528,4755,2092],"class_list":["post-658673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-anduril","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-bluechip","tag-business","tag-cristiano-amon","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-laptop","tag-palmer-luckey","tag-qualcomm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}