Anduril Industries, the fast-growing provider of U.S. military technology, signed a major development deal in Los Angeles County in the latest sign of how increased government spending is reshaping the nation’s former aerospace industrial hubs.
The firm is banking on added government demand for its autonomous fighter jets and submarines with plans for a $1 billion mixed-use real estate project in Long Beach, California.
Anduril has leased more than 1 million square feet of land in Douglas Park, a historic aerospace hub in Southern California’s “Space Beach” region, with landlord Sares Regis Group signed on to develop the project. At full build-out, the six buildings will support roughly 5,500 jobs, combining 750,000 square feet of offices with 435,000 square feet of industrial and research facilities.
The deal comes on the heels of the firm’s announcement to build a 5 million-square-foot manufacturing plant in Ohio.
After nearly a decade of consistent growth, there’s potential for an initial public offering. The company, founded in 2017, is considered by some analysts to be the world’s most valuable private tech firm, with a valuation of $30 billion at its most recent capital raising.
Much of that growth has been the result of military contracts. The Trump administration has announced plans to increase defense spending in 2027 to $1.5 trillion, up from $900 billion in 2026 and $895 billion in 2025.
The Anduril expansion underscores Southern California’s reliance on the defense and aerospace economy as Pentagon spending increasingly shifts toward autonomous systems, rapid prototyping and advanced manufacturing, according to Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson. Over the past two years alone, more than $750 million in U.S. Department of Defense funding has poured into space and aerospace companies in Long Beach, he said.
“This investment is a major vote of confidence in Long Beach and California’s leadership in advanced manufacturing and aerospace,” Richardson said in a statement, citing the city’s workforce depth and long industrial legacy as a magnet for growing firms.
Construction is expected to begin by midyear, with the first building in the complex opening by the end of 2027, executives say. Analysts call Long Beach one of Southern California’s more development-friendly cities, but permitting delays, high construction costs and other headwinds could still delay that timeline.
Defense spending spree
The ramp-up in government spending has translated into major contracts, including $3.5 billion for 72 missile-tracking satellites, $8.6 billion for F-15IA fighter jets and $931 million for AI-enabled cloud infrastructure. The Pentagon’s rapid investment in next-generation technologies signals a strategic shift to modernize military capabilities and outpace global threats.
Meanwhile, venture funding for U.S.-based defense tech startups hit an all-time high in 2025, reaching roughly $49.1 billion for the year, according to JPMorgan, exceeding the 2021 peak.
A host of companies have benefited, including Torrance, California-based Castelion; Long Beach-based Rocket Lab; Denver-based Palantir; and Falls Church, Virginia’s Northrup Gumman. For its part, Castelion said it will build a $200 million, 1,000-acre manufacturing campus for hypersonic missiles in New Mexico’s Sandoval County near Albuquerque, designed to support high-cadence production of hypersonic strike systems.
Within the past year, several defense tech-driven developments have sprung up across the nation. In Maryland, San Diego-based Kratos Defense opened a 55,000-square-foot hypersonic system manufacturing and payload integration facility; in Alabama, L3HArris, based in Melbourne, Florida, opened a 379,000-square-foot solid rocket motor production facility; and in New York, East Aurora-based Moog opened a 120,000-foot facility dedicated to its diverse space technology portfolio.
Anduril Industries has grown out of a modest Irvine headquarters where it started into a Costa Mesa campus spanning some 500,000 square feet after a regional search that included downtown Los Angeles.
The company currently leases 1.1 million square feet of industrial and office space just south of Long Beach in Orange County, having recently expanded in Costa Mesa, and maintaining locations in Irvine and Santa Ana, California.
Anduril is headed by Chief Executive Palmer Luckey, who sold his virtual reality headset company Oculus to Facebook in 2014. Anduril’s growth has been propelled by its groundbreaking development of the autonomous surveillance system Ghost drone in 2020.
The company’s Long Beach campus will be designed to integrate software engineers, hardware teams, flight testing and manufacturing to accelerate development of autonomous aircraft, underwater vehicles and missile defense systems.
The campus would more than double the firm’s Southern California footprint to around 2.2 million square feet, likely making it one of the largest defense contractors in the region, behind Northrup Grumman, which has 4.3 million square feet, and Raytheon with 2.7 million square feet. Southern California's highly educated and skilled trade workforce is a key draw for manufacturers in defense and space.
Anduril is also planning to build a 5 million-square-foot manufacturing campus called Arsenal-1 near Rickenbacker International Airport in Ohio, a project expected to create more than 4,000 jobs and backed by a $310 million incentive package from JobsOhio to boost domestic production of military drones and autonomous defense systems.
Space Beach draws big names
Southern California became the epicenter of modern aerospace in the 20th century, concentrating aircraft production, jet testing, missiles and space programs within a dense ecosystem of companies, military bases and labs.
In the 21st century, firms like SpaceX revived that edge, and Anduril is poised to take it to the next level, according to Jesse Gundersheim, CoStar’s senior director of market analytics for Los Angeles.
Over the past year, Long Beach has solidified its status as “Space Beach,” becoming a major hub for aerospace and defense innovation with companies like Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, Vast, JetZero, SpinLaunch and True Anomaly establishing or expanding physical operations in the city.
These firms are driving advancements in launch systems, 3D-printed rockets, blended-wing aircraft and even the world’s first commercial space station, Haven-1, being built by Vast.
These modern drone- and space-related companies established themselves in the Los Angeles area in the early 2000s and are now sinking deeper roots, even as traditional aircraft manufacturing in the region has slowed, according to Gundersheim.
Nearly 120 companies in those specific missile, space and navigation system industries in the region occupy nearly 200 buildings totaling 13.9 million square feet, CoStar data shows. And that total does not include Northrop Grumman or aircraft manufacturers Boeing and General Dynamics, which occupy another 7.5 million square feet in Southern California.
Cal State Long Beach, USC’s rocket propulsion lab and the Ares rocket project at UCLA are educating young engineers who feed into SoCal’s missile, space and navigation ecosystem.
“Space Beach is so popular now because the labor force has been there for generations. You’ve got a phenomenal labor source for engineering and aerospace,” said Damian McKinney, a longtime broker in Long Beach with Avison Young, who did not work on the Anduril deal.
Douglas Park, where the new Anduril facility will sit, opened in the early 2010s following a major redevelopment of the Douglas Aircraft Co. manufacturing plant later operated by Boeing — a World War II-era factory where over 15,000 airplanes were built before aerospace operations ceased in the 2000s.
The business park spans over 4 million square feet and is home to nearly 30 companies.