Defense tech startup Anduril Industries has raised $2.5 billion at a $30.5 billion valuation, including the new capital, Chairman Trae Stephens said on Thursday.

“As we continue working on building a company that has the capacity to scale into the largest problems for the national security community, we thought it was really important to shore up the balance sheet and make sure we have the ability to deploy capital into these manufacturing and production problem sets that we’re working on,” Stephens told Bloomberg TV at the publication’s tech summit in San Francisco.

Reports of the latest financing surfaced in February, around the same time the company took over Microsoft‘s multibillion-dollar augmented reality headset program with the U.S. Army. Last week, Anduril announced a deal with Meta to create virtual and augmented reality devices intended for use by the Army.

The latest funding round, which doubles Anduril’s valuation from August, was led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. The venture firm contributed $1 billion, said Stephens, who’s also a partner at the firm.

Stephens said it’s the largest check Founders Fund has ever written.

Since its founding in 2017 by Oculus creator Palmer Luckey, Anduril has been working to shake up the defense contractor space currently dominated by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

Anduril has been a member of the CNBC Disruptor 50 list three times and ranked as No. 2 last year.

Luckey founded Anduril after his ousting from Facebook, which acquired Oculus in 2014 and later made the virtual reality headsets the centerpiece of its metaverse efforts.

Stephens emphasized the importance of the recent partnership between the two sides, and “Palmer being able to go back to his roots and reach a point of forgiveness with the Meta team.”

In April, Founders Fund closed a $4.6 billion late-stage venture fund, according to a filing with the SEC. A substantial amount of the capital was provided by the firm’s general partners, including Stephens, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC at the time.

Anduril is one of the most highly valued private tech companies in the U.S. and has been able to reel in large sums of venture money during a period of few big exits and IPOs. While the IPO market is showing signs of life after a three-plus year drought, Anduril isn’t planning to head in that direction just yet, Stephens said.

“Long term we continue to believe that Anduril is the shape of a publicly traded company,” Stephens said. “We’re not in any rapid path to doing that. We’re certainly going through the processes required to prepare for doing something like that in the medium term. Right now we’re just focused on the mission at hand, going at this as hard as we can.”

WATCH: Why Palantir, Anduril are Washington’s new tech favorites

Palantir CEO Alex Karp said the artificial intelligence arms race between the U.S. and China will culminate in one country coming out on top.

“My general bias on AI is it is dangerous,” Karp told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Thursday. “There are positive and negative consequences, and either we win or China will win.”

Karp has been a vocal advocate for U.S. AI dominance. He told CNBC in January that the country needs to “run harder, run faster” in an “all-country effort” to develop more advanced AI models.

In a recent letter to shareholders, he also touted Palantir’s commitment to equipping and enhancing U.S. defense interests.

The billionaire tech CEO said Thursday that the U.S. currently has a leg up in the AI race and Palantir is leading the way in making companies more secure and efficient with its tools.

“There is no economy in the world with this kind of corporate leadership which is willing to pivot, which understands technologies, which is willing to look at new things, but also has deep domain expertise,” he said. “Our allies in the West, in Europe, are going to have to learn from us.”

Shares of the Denver-based data analytics and AI software firm outperformed in 2024 and have continued their ascent in 2025 as investors bet on their software and work with key government contractors and agencies.

The stock is up 74% this year, but investors have to shell out on a higher earnings multiple than its tech peers.

“You don’t like the price, exit,” Karp said Thursday in response.

Karp also asserted that the company is “not surveilling Americans” in response to recent New York Times report that Palantir is helping the Trump administration gather data on Americans.

WATCH: Alex Karp on Teletracking partnership: Using our platform to invest in scale

Shares of Tesla slid about 5% Thursday as CEO Elon Musk continued his relentless pressure on Congress to “KILL” President Donald Trump‘s spending bill.

Musk in recent days has threatened to primary lawmakers who vote for the bill and called it a “disgusting abomination,” marking a significant shift in his comments about the administration.

The fall in shares comes as the EV maker saw a 22% rally in May despite weak sales numbers, with Musk wrapping his time as Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Shares are down more than 20% this year and well off the high of $488.54 reached on Dec. 18.

Since Musk’s special government employee term ended Friday, he’s appeared at odds with the Trump administration and gone on a full assault against the president’s signature tax-cut bill.

“One of the things about Elon is when he goes all in, he goes all in,” Walter Isaacson, who wrote a book about Musk, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday.

“He is somebody who’s not exactly calibrated in these things and he is seriously upset,” Isaacson said.

The SpaceX and xAI CEO posted a stream of attacks against the Trump bill on X Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Tesla is facing more fundamental problems with plummeting sales of its electric vehicles in major markets in Europe, and a declining brand reputation in the West.

Tesla is also under pressure to launch a long-delayed, driverless ride hailing service this month in Austin.

While Musk has said that Tesla is already testing driverless vehicles in that market, its primary competitor Waymo is already operating a major commercial robotaxi service there in partnership with Uber.