Anduril Cofounder Trae Stephens Is Now A Billionaire

Last week, Anduril announced that it had raised a mega funding round led by Founders Fund, valuing the company at more than $30 billion, doubling its valuation in less than a year.

The deal also minted a new defense tech billionaire: company chairman Trae Stephens.

The Forbes Midas List alum, who is also a partner at Founders Fund — which led the round with a $1 billion investment, its largest ever — owns more than 3% of Anduril, according to Forbes’ estimates, pushing his net worth beyond $1 billion. Stephens and Anduril declined to comment.

Booming investor appetite for military startups has helped make Stephens the latest entrant to a group of billionaires who have built fortunes selling weapons systems to the government. His Anduril cofounder Palmer Luckey is worth $3.6 billion, Forbes estimates, while Alex Karp, the cofounder and CEO of military software firm Palantir is worth $11.9 billion.

Since launching in 2017, Anduril has been at the forefront of a new generation of venture-backed startups making weapons, drones and software for the military — an ecosystem that is increasingly being embraced by the Trump administration. Last month, Anduril emerged as a frontrunner alongside SpaceX and Palantir to develop a weapons system for Trump’s proposed $175 billion Golden Dome for America plan, which aims to combat missile threats.

Stephens has taken an atypical route to becoming a Silicon Valley billionaire. After stints in multiple political offices and the intelligence community, he was an early employee at Palantir, which was cofounded by Peter Thiel. The famed investor convinced him to join Founders Fund in 2014 as a partner. There, he met Luckey during a retreat hosted by the investment firm, and the two developed the idea behind Anduril: applying a Silicon Valley strategy to a military-facing business.

At Founders Fund, Stephens has also backed other defense tech companies, including Gecko Robotics (valued over $600 million), which makes hardware and software to protect defense infrastructure, and Varda Space Industries (valued more than $500 million), which tests drugs and manufactures things like fiber optic cables in space. He also led the series A funding round into supply chain logistics startup Flexport (most recently publicly valued at $8 billion). That “check that I wrote was maybe the best one, aside from” Anduril, he previously told Forbes.

Beyond Anduril and Founders Fund, Stephens, who ranked No. 19 on the 2025 Midas List, also is the cofounder of Sol, a startup making eyeglasses with Kindle-style lenses for “immersive reading” that last raised a seed funding round led by YC Combinator chief Garry Tan in 2023.

Stephens, who previously worked on President Donald Trump’s transition team during his first term, was also considered for a senior Defense Department role this year, but it didn’t materialize (citing one source, Semafor previously reported that some administration officials were concerned about Stephens’ investments; Stephens declined to comment at the time).

At Anduril, which generated $1 billion in revenue last year, Stephens is aiming to scale up production of its suite of military products. The company, which sells drones, augmented reality helmets, sensors and software to connect them, raised $1.5 billion last year to build a factory in Ohio, called Arsenal-1, to rapidly scale up its production of aerial and maritime drones. And last month, Anduril announced it was partnering with Meta to make an AI-powered headset for the military.

The fresh $2.5 billion in funding, a series G round, will also be used to acquire new companies, and expand operations in Australia and Europe, spokesperson Shannon Prior told Forbes last week.