Defense tech startup Anduril Industries will go public, founder and CEO Palmer Luckey said Tuesday.
“We are definitely going to be a publicly traded company,” he told CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime.” “We are running this company to be the shape of a publicly traded company.”
He added that there isn’t “really a path” for a company like Anduril to win significant trillion-dollar defense contracts without going public.
Luckey did not detail an IPO timeline.
Since its founding, Anduril has risen to become one of the most highly valued private U.S. technology companies and is an innovator in the defense tech space, chipping away at competition from industry leaders Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
The company, which ranked No.1 on the CNBC Disruptor 50 list this year, was created by Luckey in 2017 after he was pushed out by Meta. Luckey sold his virtual reality headset company Oculus to Facebook in 2014.
Despite Luckey’s ousting, the companies announced a joint partnership to create virtual and augmented reality devices for the U.S. Army last month.
“I’m working with Meta because we’ve buried the hatchet and because there’s a lot of incredible technology that they have, that paired with Anduril, can make a huge difference for the American war fighter,” he said.
Anduril has continued to scoop up funding despite a difficult deal environment that’s just beginning to reopen for IPOs after a multi-year drought.
Chairman Trae Stephens told Bloomberg last week that Anduril recently raised $2.5 billion at a $30.5 billion valuation. That more than doubles its valuation from a funding round in August led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.
Anduril recently took over Microsoft‘s $22 billion augmented-reality headset program with the U.S. Army. The company also unveiled a partnership with OpenAI in December, and announced plans to invest roughly $1 billion in a manufacturing facility in Ohio earlier this year.
WATCH: Anduril tops CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list, watch full interview with Founder Palmer Luckey
