Full Anduril R&D Tour: Matt Grimm, Co-Founder & COO

Exclusive | Matt Grimm, Co-Founder & COO

FULL R&D TOUR

Matt Grimm, Co-Founder & COO of Anduril, walks us through Anduril’s headquarters in Costa Mesa—a rare, & possibly first-look, inside the physical systems that turn ideas into fielded products. We tour Building A, a 200,000 sq ft R&D facility with machine shop, composites, metrology, electronic warfare test environments, & a dev-test area designed to “break things” so the team can iterate faster.

→ Listen on X, Spotify, YouTube, Apple

Grimm explains how Anduril scaled from a ~5,000 sq ft former lost-luggage garage (with mold and no bathroom) to a global footprint of ~7,000 employees and roughly 34–35 offices, while ramping production and operations.

We also get hands-on with key systems and platforms, including the Ghost Shark (XL-AUV) autonomous submarine program and Anduril’s distributed compute and command-and-control stack: Menace & Titan (in partnership with Palantir).

(P.S. Driving Menace-X was very fun.)

How the Co-Founders divide responsibilities at scale:

• Matt Grimm, COO, runs the operational core, from facilities & security to supply chain, production, logistics, & sustainment

• Palmer Luckey drives new product concepts & CONOPS while serving as Anduril’s most visible public figure

• Brian Schimpf, CEO, sets strategy & evaluates global defense programs & timing

• Trae Stephens, Executive Chairman, leads investor relations & owns marketing and design (ie. Ohio State, NASCAR)

This is Part 2 of 4 of our interview series with Anduril’s Founders, in addition to our compiled video, check them all out!

• Inside Anduril HQ

• Part I: Full Interview with CEO Brian Schimpf

If it weren’t for Matt we wouldn’t have gotten this complete series together, everyone please say thank you to Matt.

5 Key Takeaways

• Anduril’s speed comes from co-locating design, prototyping, testing, and measurement: engineers can iterate from CAD → part → test → redesign with minimal latency.

• The dev-test philosophy is explicit: build environments to stress, degrade, and fail systems (salt water, vibration, temperature cycles, voltage, EW/jamming resiliency).

• Grimm frames operations as the hidden constraint: global supply chain, logistics, fielding, and sustainment are what turns prototypes into scalable programs.

• The campus itself is part of the system design: a 200,000 sq ft R&D building on a ~650,000 sq ft HQ footprint optimized for fast iteration and internal manufacturing of early runs.

• Co-founder role clarity matters at 7,000 employees: Palmer (product concepts/public persona), Trae (IR + marketing/design), Brian (strategy/CEO), Matt (operations “guts”).

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒

• (00:00) Matt Grimm, COO Anduril

• (00:49) Anduril HQ: 200K sq ft R&D building

• (01:45) Ghost Shark XL AUV submarine

• (03:20) Lost luggage garage to 7,000 employees

• (06:05) Founders’ roles: Palmer, Brian, Trae, Matt

• (08:25) Supply chain, production & logistics

• (09:09) Anechoic Chamber: radar, EW & jamming tests

• (10:25) Metrology Lab: precision part measurement

• (14:37) Dev test area: saltwater, vibration, battery failure & more

• (16:36) The COO that reads every Slack message?

• (18:09) Machine Shop: custom fabrication

• (20:51) CNC machining: Fury bulkheads and jet engine blades

• (22:32) Drone frame evolution

• (25:44) LA Times printing press campus history

• (29:35) Driving Menace-X: mobile battlefield command center

• (33:00) Titan: Joint venture with Palantir for Army

• (34:24) Fury: Matt’s favorite product

TITAN: Anduril x Palantir

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