Anduril to Open Massive Long Beach Campus, Promises Thousands of New Jobs
Defense technology firm Anduril has announced plans to significantly expand its Southern California operations with a new campus in Long Beach, the coastal city where founder Palmer Luckey grew up.
The new facility is projected to create approximately 5,500 jobs, Luckey told TechCrunch, emphasizing that these roles will be new positions rather than transfers from the company’s other locations.
A State-of-the-Art Facility for R&D and Manufacturing
Anduril’s headquarters are located nearby in Costa Mesa, California, and the company also operates a large manufacturing facility in Ohio. The Long Beach campus will cover 1.18 million square feet across six buildings, combining office spaces with industrial areas dedicated to research and development. Anduril expects the campus to be operational by mid-2027.
“Long Beach is a major aerospace hub right in our backyard,” Luckey told TechCrunch, highlighting the strategic advantage of the location.
Hiring Across Disciplines
The company plans to recruit employees similar to those at its Costa Mesa headquarters. Positions will include manufacturing workers, technicians, assembly staff, and engineers specializing in electrical, mechanical, and aerodynamics disciplines. There will also be build-and-test roles as well as logistics positions, since the products manufactured at the campus are intended for global distribution.
“A lot of people on the logistics side, because the things that we’re going to be making there, we’re going to be sending all over the world,” Luckey said.
Fighter Jets Take Center Stage
While the job creation made headlines, Luckey said his personal highlight of the expansion is the company’s work on autonomous fighter jets.
“It looks like we’re going to be able to manufacture autonomous fighter jets that will take off right from the factory and fly to wherever the customer needs them,” he explained. “We might have jets leaving the factory, flying directly into combat. And I think that that is extremely cool.”
Anduril specializes in autonomous military drones and aircraft for land, air, and sea applications. In 2025, it unveiled Fury, an AI-operated fighter jet capable of flying autonomously based on human-set flight plans. Fury completed its first test flight in California on October 31, 2025.
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