Anduril CEO says it’s bad to IPO in ‘middle of a hype cycle’
Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf said the defense technology company is in no rush to go public given current market conditions.
Allen & Co. on Thursday. “We define a successful IPO as our investors getting a good return three years after exit,” Schimpf told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin at the Sun Valley Conference. “A bad time to do this is in the middle of the excitement cycle. So we’re in no rush to get out.”
Defense technology companies like Anduril are driving a surge in demand for their products and services, fueled by President Donald Trump’s military reindustrialization desires. As spending on technology reaches an all-time high, the defense budget is on track to reach $1.5 trillion.
Still, the market for tech initial public offerings remains relatively stagnant even after SpaceX Record bid last month. Shares of Elon Musk’s space and artificial intelligence company closed its third day at $201.80 but have since lost about a quarter of their value and are trading just above their $150 opening price.
Meanwhile, AI model leaders OpenAI and Anthropic have confidentially filed to go public, but neither has set a timeline for their IPOs. Some investors are becoming increasingly skeptical about whether the public market will buy into companies’ current valuations of close to $1 trillion.
Anduril, which produces unmanned aerial vehicles and artificial intelligence-supported weapons, doubled its value to $61 billion in May and became one of the most valuable private technology companies. Schimpf said at the time that the company would invest “aggressively” in scaling defense systems for the United States.
Shield AI and Saronic, defense technology companies that build autonomous ships, also completed major financing rounds earlier this year.
But that’s not necessarily a good thing, Schimpf said.
“We’re seeing crazy high valuations on future growth prospects and all these different things,” he said. “I’m not sure the market is particularly rational about pricing right now.”
As Anduril scales, so do questions about when the shares will eventually go public. Founder Palmer Luckey said he was “absolutely” aiming to go public but had not set a target.
“I think a lot of companies are moving dangerously into overvalued territory, which could backfire,” Schimpf said.
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