By Stephen Nellis
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Defense tech firm Anduril said on Tuesday it plans to build a series of rugged computers in the United States for government and military customers, using chips from Qualcomm.
Anduril, led by founder Palmer Luckey, has been announcing new military weapons and drones at a rapid pace and is in talks to raise funding at a valuation of about $100 billion. The company reported $2.2 billion in revenue in 2025 and doubled its workforce, it said in January.
The BlueChip laptops will be made in the US, with circuit board assembly planned for an Anduril plant in Ohio. Anduril said it is also developing US production for the laptop's case, batteries and other key parts while qualifying other US suppliers for production.
In a press announcement, the companies said on Tuesday they plan to take a "phased approach" aimed at "establishing an end-to-end American supply chain."
During a press conference, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said that the Snapdragon X chips for the laptops will be made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co at its Arizona facilities.
Qualcomm is a relatively new entrant to the laptop chip market and has been adding security and AI features to its chips. During the press conference, Anduril's Luckey said that handling AI work privately on a laptop is an important feature for government and defense customers.
"I've been using my BlueChip laptop to do a whole bunch of local model work where I don't I don't want to, and actually am not allowed to, send certain information out into the cloud," Luckey said. "Having devices that can do a really good job of onboard AI inference, running local models, is actually really, really important.”
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; editing by David Gaffen)
