Inside Anduril’s Big Gamble: An Ohio Weapons Factory

Just past the soybean farms in Pickaway County, Ohio, stands a flat-roofed building clad in blue and gray panels, with John Deere tractors near the entrance and hard hat–wearing construction workers busily laying pipes in the ground.

The 866,000-square-foot factory isn’t much to behold—it looks like any of the many humble industrial warehouses that line the roads near Rickenbacker International Airport, a Midwest cargo hub. But the company behind the facility—Anduril, a highly valued defense tech startup—has attached lofty dreams to the factory: It hopes the site will greatly increase its manufacturing capacity and help it satisfy the goals it gave investors in recent weeks as it sought $4 billion of fresh capital.

Inside, Keith Flynn, Anduril’s bearded, broad-shouldered manufacturing chief, stands in front of glossy renderings of what the company hopes to eventually add to this pocket of Ohio 20 minutes south of Columbus: a full Silicon Valley–style campus with a half-dozen buildings over a 500-acre site. As Anduril puts finishing touches on the factory, construction is just beginning on a second building close by. The startup has already chosen a chest-thumping name for the campus: Arsenal 1.