Meta and Anduril to build military-focused AR/VR devices

Halo helmets are coming to the US military. Yesterday, Meta and defense-tech startup Anduril announced they’ve formed a partnership to create virtual and augmented reality devices for American soldiers.

• It marks a boomerang moment for Anduril founder Palmer Lackey, who sold his VR startup Oculus to Meta for $2 billion in 2014, and, after being fired by the tech giant in 2017, started the defense company.

The mission: Develop and build EagleEye, a line of VR/AR helmets, glasses, and other wearables that enhance hearing and vision, allowing soldiers to do things like detect drones flying miles away, as well as operate and interact with AI-powered weapon systems.

The AR/VR platform that shares a name with a 2008 Shia LaBeouf film where an all-powerful AI system goes rogue will be underpinned by Meta’s AI models and Anduril’s software, an artificial intelligence-powered command and control system that provides real-time battlefield intel for decision making.

Trading one big “M” for another: The companies are jointly bidding on an up to $100 million Army contract—which, if awarded, would mark Meta’s largest-ever tie-up with the Pentagon. The contract is intended to vet headset prototypes tied to a larger $22 billion wearables project that Anduril took over from Microsoft in February.

Defense dollars are proving alluring for tech: Google earlier this year joined Meta in changing its policies to allow its AI models to be used by US military contractors, while OpenAI and Anthropic are actively working on AI-related defense contracts.