SEATTLE — Defense contractor Anduril Industries is expanding in Seattle, with hiring plans to fill out what it calls its connected warfare headquarters.

After installing a small office in Seattle about six years ago, the Costa Mesa, California-based company has expanded into Bellevue and Seattle's ship canal, pumping millions of dollars into the region as it develops and sells its autonomous weapons technology to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Anduril, which was recently valued at $61 billion, was funded early on by the Founders Fund, a venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel. Thiel was the first outside investor in Facebook, and a backer of Vice President JD Vance's 2022 senatorial campaign.

Permit applications filed within the last month show the company is eyeing another floor in the 2+U office tower in downtown Seattle, where it already occupies several floors. It first moved to the tower about four years ago, quietly subleasing space from job-search company Indeed, according to a 2022 office market report from the brokerage Colliers.

The company said it has more than 100 open roles in the Seattle area, more than half of which are designated as software engineering. Many of the roles will support Anduril's connected warfare division, which is based in Seattle. The division focuses primarily on military communication, according to Anduril.

Anduril set up shop in Seattle in 2020, when it announced it was opening an operations center in the city. Permit application records show that initial office was likely in a small space in the Olympic Block building in Pioneer Square. It's unclear if Anduril still occupies the space.

The company has also planted a flag across Lake Washington. Last year, the company snapped up almost 40,000 square feet of office space in Bellevue, taking over several floors in the Skyline Tower that Meta had vacated.

But California tech companies moving into Seattle and Bellevue offices isn't unusual, even in a postpandemic world. Anduril's unconventional move last year may be its biggest undertaking so far in the region.

The company announced in November that it was partnering with shipbuilder HD Hyundai Heavy Industries to create autonomous warships for the U.S. Navy, under the Modular Attack Surface Craft program. The news release from Anduril said the point of the program was to preserve maritime security" as using airborne drones to defend commercial shipping is not economically sustainable.

The autonomous boats built by HD Hyundai with Anduril autonomous software will be assembled in the former Foss Shipyard, just east of the Ballard Bridge. Anduril said it has invested "tens of millions of dollars" to revamp the retired shipyard, which will serve as the initial hub for HD Hyundai and Anduril.

GeekWire first reported on Anduril's plans in Seattle's ship canal.

"The Pacific Northwest, home to the wartime legacy of Kaiser Shipyards and the original Freedom’s Forge, offers the infrastructure, supply chain depth, and skilled labor to expand U.S. shipbuilding capacity," Anduril said in a November news release. "The region provides the ideal conditions to re-energize American shipbuilding and grow the maritime workforce."

Anduril isn't the only autonomous drone company along the ship canal. Public safety-focused drone manufacturer Brinc Drones announced in March that it was opening a headquarters and factory at West Canal Yards, a former fish cannery near the Foss Shipyard.

Anduril, named after a sword in "The Lord of the Rings, was founded in 2017 by a group of former tech executives and entrepreneurs, with Palmer Luckey as the most public-facing figure.

Luckey had previously founded Oculus VR in 2012, the company that developed the Oculus virtual reality headset. The company was purchased by Meta, then known as Facebook, in 2014 for $2 billion.

Meta's acquisition of Oculus laid the groundwork for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse pivot in 2021 — along with the company's name change. A year prior, Meta had pushed all of its virtual and augmented reality teams into the newly created Reality Labs, the division at the company that drove the metaverse. It also lost about $76.9 billion between 2021 and 2025, according to regulatory filings. Meta has since shifted away from the metaverse and has funneled the resources and technology into artificial intelligence.

Oculus had several offices in Seattle's Sodo District at one point.

Luckey left Meta in 2017, following reports that he had donated to an organization affiliated with anti-Hillary Clinton memes during the 2016 presidential election.

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