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Alex Karp, Palmer Luckey and the Pentagon’s New Defense-Tech Order

Palantir and Anduril hold Army agreements worth up to $30 billion combined, with new deals expanding their Pentagon business. But those figures aren't spending totals.

Palantir takes its name from Tolkien’s seeing stones. Anduril chose Aragorn’s reforged sword. Alex Karp’s company made its name in data integration and battlefield software, while Palmer Luckey’s combines software with autonomous hardware, drones and weapons systems. The Pentagon, it turns out, has found plenty to buy from companies that borrowed their names from fantasy literature.

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The Tolkien lineage runs through the companies themselves. Brian Schimpf, Anduril’s co-founder and chief executive, previously ran engineering at Palantir before joining Luckey’s startup. Luckey has said that Anduril’s five co-founders were avid Lord of the Rings fans; he keeps a collector’s version of Andúril hanging on his wall. The two companies now hold separate Army contracts with a combined ceiling of $30 billion.

Palantir’s agreement runs for as long as 10 years and is capped at $10 billion. Anduril’s, signed in March, is a separate 10-year vehicle capped at $20 billion.

The Army describes Palantir’s $10 billion as a maximum potential value, “not any specific obligations or commitments.” Matthew Steckman, Anduril’s president, put the distinction more bluntly after his company’s deal was announced in March: “There’s no money attached to........

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