Space Beach will soon get a new resident.<\/p>\n
Anduril Industries, a defense company headquartered in Costa Mesa, announced plans on Thursday, Jan. 22, to open a major new campus in Long Beach.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s new campus, its announcement said, will house six buildings across 1.18 million square feet. About 435,000 sqaure feet of the campus will be dedicated to industrial research and development space, with the additional 750,000 square feet being reserved for office space.<\/p>\n
In total, the company expects to employ 5,500 people on site once the new campus is up-and-running \u2014 which is expected in mid-2027, Anduril Industries said.<\/p>\n
Anduril Industries was founded in 2017 in Orange County by Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR and designer of Facebook\u2019s (now Meta) Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.<\/p>\n
Palmer was fired from Facebook in 2017<\/a> over a controversy surrounding his $10,000 donation to President Donald Trump\u2019s first campaign. It was later revealed that he negotiated a $100 million payout from the company after he hired an employment lawyer to argue Facebook had broken state law, according to the Wall Street Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n That same year, Palmer co-founded Anduril Industries with former Oculus VR hardware developer Joseph Chen, alongside former Palantir Technology employees Brain Schimpf, Trae Stephens and Matt Grimm.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s mission is \u201ctransforming defense capabilities with advanced technology,\u201d according to its website. The company is focused on bolstering U.S. and allied military capabilities using artificial intelligence, advanced robotics and autonomous systems, according to its website.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s flagship offering is Lattice, a software platform that \u201cpowers the capabilities of our software-defined weapons, and easily integrates with third-party and government-owned capabilities to create a comprehensive, extensible network of sensors and effectors,\u201d the company\u2019s website says.<\/p>\n Anduril is also significantly involved in surveilling America\u2019s Southern border with Mexico, according to its website. Its Sentry towers, which uses artificial intelligence to \u201cprovide highly accurate, persistent and autonomous awareness across land, sea and air,\u201d are already in use to monitor more than 30% of the U.S.-Mexico border, its website says.<\/p>\n \u201cAutonomous Sentry towers detect, classify, and track objects of interest in real-time across vast and remote terrains,\u201d the company\u2019s website says, \u201csaving manpower and cost spent on manual surveillance while keeping agents out of harm\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n