Defense technology company Anduril on Thursday declare plans to expand its presence in Southern California with its main campus in Long Beach, the coastal city where founder Palmer Luckey grew up.
The expanded campus will support around 5,500 jobs. Luckey told TechCrunch that this will be a new project, not a transfer from another operation.
Anduril’s headquarters is nearby, in Costa Mesa, California, and is also massive manufacturing facility in Ohio. The Long Beach campus will span 1.18 million square feet in six buildings, combining office space and an industrial area dedicated to R&D. It is expected to be ready by mid-2027, the company said.
Long Beach is “a major aerospace hub in our backyard,” Luckey told TechCrunch about why the company chose the location.
The plan is to hire the same employees as those who work at headquarters: manufacturing workers, technicians, assembly workers, and engineers in various disciplines (electrical, mechanical, aerodynamics), as well as building and testing roles, and “a lot of people on the logistics side, because the things that will be done there, will be sent all over the world,” he said.
While bringing thousands of jobs to his childhood city made headlines today, Luckey said the most exciting part for him is the fighter jet.
“It looks like we’re going to be able to build an autonomous fighter jet that will take off straight from the factory and fly to wherever the customer needs it,” he said. “We could have jets coming out of the factory, flying straight into combat. And I think that’s great.”
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Anduril makes drones and autonomous military aircraft for land, air and sea. In 2025, that is open fighter jets called Fury, which is designed to fly autonomously, meaning it operates using AI rather than being remotely controlled by a human operator. AI executes flight plans set by humans. The Fury completely independent first test flight in California on October 31.