Anduril Industries Inc. yesterday said it has acquired Dive Technologies Inc., adding autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs, to its portfolio of unmanned systems for military and other applications.
“The world beneath the ocean is completely different than the one above it,” stated Brian Schimpf, co-founder and CEO of Anduril. “It requires different types of sensors, modalities, and problem solving than the work we are doing in air, land, and space. The Dive Technologies team brings unparalleled, deep domain expertise under the sea, as well as a shared commitment to transforming U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology.”
Founded in 2017, Anduril Industries supplies the U.S. military and allies with autonomous systems and artificial intelligence. The Irvine, Calif.-based company said its systems use Lattice OS, an AI-powered operating system that turns thousands of data streams into a real-time, 3D command-and-control center. Anduril added that it is “committed to bringing cutting-edge AI, computer vision, sensor fusion, and networking technology to the military in months, not years.”
Anduril expands underwater capabilities with Dive
Founded in 2018, Dive Technologies designs, develops, and deploys AUVs for large-scale commercial, scientific, and defense data collection. The Boston-based company claimed that its reliable and flexible platforms are designed to help customers easily and efficiently collect subsea data. It raised $4 million in equity funding in late 2020 and last year partnered with Metron Inc. on autonomy, navigation, and control software.
The DIVE-LD is a modular and customizable AUV that can be optimized for a variety of missions such as long-range oceanographic sensing, undersea battlespace awareness, mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, seabed mapping, and infrastructure health monitoring.
Dive said it uses large-format additive manufacturing (LFAM) techniques and a novel system architecture to rapidly produce the DIVE-LD at a fraction of the time and cost of existing AUVs.
Unmanned offerings to provide ocean intelligence
Anduril and Dive said the integration of the next DIVE-LD iteration with the Lattice OS autonomy software “will further disrupt this segment of the market.”
“We built Dive to make undersea exploration safer, smarter, and cheaper and to offer customers the highest level of customization,” said Bill Lebo, co-founder and CEO of Dive Technologies. “With Anduril, we will rapidly scale our team, technology, and production to ensure our military partners have the best, most strategic advantage and our commercial customers have the most reliable tech in the greatest depths of the world’s oceans.”
Anduril noted that U.S. Special Operations Command chose it as systems integration partner, supporting counter-unmanned systems efforts under a nearly $1 billion Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract.
Gunderson Dettmer LLP and Covington & Burling served as legal advisors to Anduril. Polsinelli LLP served as legal advisor to Dive Technologies. Terms of the deal are not disclosed.
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