No Anduril is an island: US defence unicorn teams with GKN Aerospace on the Isle of Wight
The pair will be working with Archer Aviation and more as the UK builds up its autonomous defence capabilities
Anduril — the defence startup valued at over $30 billion earlier this year — has made a big push to position itself not as the US-based startup that it is, but as a defender of UK interests and national security.
So alongside a number of projects in the works, it’s also launched marketing campaigns in high-traffic areas in Westminster, as well as more traditional lobbying behind closed doors. Anduril’s efforts are also playing out in the partnerships it is forging.
The company this week said it had inked an “exclusive teaming agreement” with UK defence company GKN Aerospace, which will see the two collaborating to bid for business from the UK’s Ministry of Defence. That will include tenders for Project NYX — a new Army initiative launched in November to build out autonomous systems to pair with more traditional equipment such its Apache AH-64E helicopters — in addition to work on unspecified future projects out of GKN’s Isle of Wight airframe production facility.
To be clear, this agreement is about laying groundwork for deals Anduril hopes to secure in the future, not fulfilling active contacts. Showing that it’s ready to work with existing local suppliers will be an important part of how it will fulfil any orders, and so to that end, Anduril also said that it now has partnerships with more than 100 suppliers in the UK.
The list includes Atom Performance Technologies, Flarebright, Olsen Actuators and Isembard, working out to a potential impact of “an estimated 50,000 UK jobs,” Anduril said. It’s also bringing non-UK companies into the mix: another company out of Silicon Valley, Archer Aviation, will be working with the Anduril and GKN on eVTOL (electric vertical-takeoff and landing) craft and related hybrid propulsion work.
Notably, Anduril describes itself as “the lead systems integrator” in that latter project. Although Anduril is known as one of the first big startups to develop kinetic drones, there is potentially an even bigger opportunity — a very tech-forward one — to position itself as the platform player in any project, regardless which components are eventually used in final work.
That’s also important given the position that defence startups currently occupy in the wider landscape. Defence startups in the US — the biggest defence market in the Western world — accounted for just 1.3% of Pentagon contracts in the first three quarters of 2025, according to analysis from Govini (via Reuters). This is up from 0.6% a year before, but it underscores the massive current market share of larger primes.
Building an additional services services business to complement point-solutions like drones is one way to expand the revenue funnel. But partnerships — and the supply chains that those will bring — will also be essential to filling out any actual contracts in the future when (or if) Anduril secures them. And it does so in a more scalable way than Anduril replicating those supply chains from scratch on its own steam.
“This partnership with GKN Aerospace is an exciting next step in our journey to provide and deliver innovative, sovereign solutions to the UK MOD,” Rich Drake, Managing Director of Anduril UK, said in a statement. “As we work together to create novel solutions to continuously evolving threats, we are committed to utilising the full depth and breadth of British engineering talent to provide sovereign solutions to British service personnel.”
As for why primes are partnering with startups, the reasons there remain as they always have. Smaller companies (and even Anduril counts here, since its $30.5 billion valuation is only paper for now) are the ones taking more chances when it comes to R&D and innovation, and so older companies will continue to turn to them as they look to the future of defence — as partners, or investment opportunities, or both.
“Together, GKN Aerospace and Anduril will bring all-new defence solutions to the field in rapid time,” Dave Bond, SVP of defence technology for GKN Aerospace, said in a statement. “This is the start of a deep and strategic partnership and I look forward to collaborating with Anduril UK for many years to come.”