Anduril’s Massive Raise Makes Its CEO Into A Billionaire
Key takeaways
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- Forbes estimates that Schimpf, 42, is now worth $1.5 billion with an over 2% stake in the firm.
- Anduril is well on its way to creating a wave of billionaires on its own.
Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Three members of Anduril's five-person founding team are now billionaires.© 2025 Bloomberg Finance LPDefense tech disruptor Anduril passed several milestones on Wednesday. The company announced a $5 billion funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital—doubling its valuation in under a year for the second time in a row, this time to $61 billion. In the process, it minted its third billionaire, CEO and cofounder Brian Schimpf, and amped up the fortunes of billionaire cofounders Palmer Luckey and Trae Stephens.
Forbes estimates that Schimpf, 42, is now worth $1.5 billion with an over 2% stake in the firm. (He and Anduril declined to comment.) That ranks him among over 30 billionaires worldwide whose fortunes stem from defense, roughly a third of whom are American. That number is almost certain to balloon as the Pentagon continues to solicit a new generation of defense contractors who come from the startup world, rather than the old and bloated ecosystem of the “big five” primes.
Anduril is well on its way to creating a wave of billionaires on its own. Its colorful cofounder Palmer Luckey, 33, got rich selling his VR glasses company Oculus to Facebook at age 21 in 2014. He joined the three-comma ranks in 2022 thanks to Anduril, which he started in 2017 after being pushed out of Silicon Valley for supporting Trump. This latest raise brings his fortune to $5 billion, up from $3.5 billion before it closed. Anduril’s cofounder and executive chairman Trae Stephens crossed the $1 billion mark after the company’s Series G raise in June 2025; now he’s worth $1.8 billion. Cofounders Matt Grimm and Joseph Chen could be next.