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

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Dec 17, 2025

In this insightful conversation, Matt Grimm, Co-Founder and COO of Anduril, shares the extraordinary journey of the company from a tiny garage to a global defense technology leader. He provides a behind-the-scenes look at Anduril's impressive 200,000 sq ft R&D facility and the groundbreaking Ghost Shark autonomous submarine program. Matt discusses the unique hiring culture, the division of founder responsibilities, and the innovative approaches to rapid prototyping and electronic warfare testing that drive their success in the defense industry.

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ANECDOTE

Ghost Shark: Autonomous Submarine Program

Anduril's XLUUV 'Ghost Shark' is a fully autonomous submarine that accepts mission waypoints and executes searches and payload drops.
Production runs in Sydney and will expand to Quonset, Rhode Island for U.S. manufacturing at larger scale.

ANECDOTE

Humble Garage Origins

Anduril began in a 4,900 sq ft former lost-luggage garage with mold, no bathroom, and no A/C.
The five co-founders and first five hires started there before expanding into global offices and thousands of employees.

ADVICE

Hire For Can-Do, Mission Drive

Hire entrepreneurial, mission-driven people who ask 'how do we make it go right?' instead of 'what can go wrong?'.
Put them in the right roles, give clear swim lanes, and let them build teams to scale operations.

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Matt Grimm, Co-Founder & COO of Anduril, walks us through Anduril’s headquarters in Costa Mesa—a rare, and 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, and a dev-test area designed to “break things” so the team can iterate faster.

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).

As COO, Grimm also lays out how the co-founders divide responsibilities at scale: Palmer Luckey drives new product concepts & CONOPS while serving as Anduril’s most visible public figure; Brian Schimpf, as CEO, sets strategy & evaluates global defense programs & timing; Trae Stephens leads investor relations & owns marketing and design (Ohio State, NASCAR); & Matt Grimm runs the operational core, from facilities & security to supply chain, production, logistics, & sustainment.

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

Matt Grimm: https://x.com/mttgrmm

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