Fox Business · Oct 7, 2026
With Joe Lonsdale, Founder and Managing Partner of 8VC and co-founder of Palantir
Anduril is building a $3.7 billion shipyard in Baltimore, and Joe Lonsdale, one of its early investors, said companies like it will catch up with China at sea faster than the Navy can.
Liz Claman said the US Navy has fallen far behind China in shipbuilding and that its ships take forever to build. Lonsdale said the answer will come from private companies rather than from the Navy itself.
"These companies are going to beat China" — Joe Lonsdale
Joe Lonsdale, Founder and Managing Partner of 8VC, on Fox Business's The Claman Countdown, co-founded Palantir and later co-founded Erebor, a bank for technology and defense companies, with Anduril founder Palmer Luckey.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 6 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
Lonsdale would no longer call Anduril a startup
The US Navy will not close the shipbuilding gap with China on its own, he said; companies like Anduril will
Erebor lends out only up to half of its capital, against 70 or 80% at most banks
Short AI compute contracts are a sign that demand is still rising, in Lonsdale's reading of Elon Musk's deals with Anthropic
Policy and politics are the only risk to the AI boom that worries him
Trump accounts could add buying to the stock market, a point Lonsdale said he had not considered
1. Anduril Is No Startup
Liz Claman opened with two pieces of news about Anduril, the defense technology company Lonsdale backed early.
"$3.7 billion investment by military tech startup to build a new shipbuilding facility at Sparrows Point in Baltimore, Maryland." — Liz Claman
She added that it had just been awarded a "$2.9 billion contract with the U.S. Navy" tied to submarine production, and asked Lonsdale when he first saw the company and decided to invest.
He said he backed people he had worked with at Palantir
Lonsdale said several of Anduril's co-founders had worked with him at Palantir, and that when people that good build something ambitious for the country, he backs them.
"America's building again." — Joe Lonsdale
He said Anduril has outgrown the label
"I would not even call Anduril a start-up anymore" — Joe Lonsdale
