American billionaires are influencing warfare less by issuing orders than by building and financing companies whose software, satellites, cloud services and autonomous systems governments buy or use. Their firms can shape what military forces see and how quickly they act, but procurement agencies still select systems and military personnel remain responsible for their use. New defense-tech companies are growing fast; traditional contractors still bring in far more defense revenue and remain central to major weapons programs.
Where billionaire influence enters the military
Private wealth can affect military capability through several connected channels: who finances a company, what its leaders choose to build, which systems the company offers to government, and whether its executives participate in defense-policy discussions. A contract can give a firm a lasting role in military operations, but it does not mean its founder personally directs those operations.
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The Brennan Center for Justice’s March 2026 report, The Business of Military AI, by Amos Toh and Emile Ayoub, describes technology-industry leaders taking a greater role in policymaking, particularly on acquisition, testing and oversight. The report also identifies an investment ecosystem that includes Founders Fund, 8VC, Andreessen Horowitz and Lux Capital. Those investments help finance a broader field of defense-technology startups; they do not show that one investor controls the sector.
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Peter Thiel and Alex Karp launched Palantir after the September 11 attacks. Karp is its chief executive and Thiel is its board chair, according to the Brennan Center. The company’s defense role centers on software: Foundry combines large datasets, while Gotham supports defense and intelligence decision-making. These tools can bring information together for people to analyze; describing them as decision-support software is not the same as saying they independently select or attack targets.
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Anduril: sensors, software and autonomous systems
Palmer Luckey led a group of technology entrepreneurs that founded Anduril in 2017. Its early investors included Thiel’s Founders Fund, Joe Lonsdale and Marc Andreessen. The Brennan Center describes Anduril’s Lattice platform in connection with surveillance, integrating sensor information and autonomous systems. That portfolio links software to physical equipment, but the presence of software does not mean every connected system operates without human control.
What the companies do in a military system
Military technology is an interconnected supply chain, not a contest between software startups and weapons makers. Data tools may help organize information; cloud services provide computing infrastructure; satellites can carry communications or collect imagery; sensors and autonomous platforms detect or respond to events; and established contractors build large aircraft, ships and weapons systems. A capability may depend on several firms working together.
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- Data and decision support: Palantir’s software is used to integrate information for military and intelligence work.
- Autonomy and sensing: Anduril develops surveillance, counter-drone and autonomous-system capabilities, including software intended to link sensors and platforms.
- Satellite communications and launch: SpaceX’s Starlink connectivity was among the private-sector support described in reporting from Ukraine.
- Cloud infrastructure: The Defense Department awarded its Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract to Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Oracle in 2022. The Brennan Center reported that $1 billion had been awarded, with up to $8 billion more possible under the contract.
- Large platforms and complex weapons: Traditional defense primes retain a central role, and new companies can also partner with established contractors. Palantir’s TITAN partner list, for example, includes Northrop Grumman and L3Harris as well as Anduril and other firms.
That division of work matters. A software provider may influence how data is assembled and presented without manufacturing the aircraft or making the operational decision. A government award identifies a procurement relationship; it does not by itself establish how widely a product has been deployed or what effect it has had in combat.
Contracts show growing access, not equal scale
Recent awards illustrate how technology companies enter defense procurement. In May 2024, the Army awarded Palantir a $480 million battlefield-information software deal, Axios reported. In April 2024, the Air Force selected Anduril and General Atomics for collaborative combat aircraft work. The Defense Department also named Anduril among prototype providers for its Replicator initiative, which announced a goal of fielding multiple thousands of all-domain attritable autonomous systems by August 2025. The announcement establishes the program’s stated goal and Anduril’s selection at the time; it does not establish that the goal was met.
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The Brennan Center reported that in 2025 the Army consolidated 75 Palantir contracts into one agreement worth up to $10 billion over 10 years, covering Titan and Maven Smart System. “Up to” is important: an agreement ceiling is not the amount already paid or spent. Palantir and Anduril also announced a national-security AI consortium in December 2024; that is the companies’ stated initiative, not independent evidence of its results.
Revenue puts startup growth in perspective
The figures below are from the Brennan Center’s 2026 report and refer to fiscal year 2025. The report labels the newer firms’ figures as defense revenue and the traditional primes’ figures as contracting revenue, so they should not be treated as perfectly equivalent accounting measures.
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| Company | Fiscal year 2025 measure reported | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Palantir | Defense revenue | $903 million |
| Anduril | Defense revenue | $912 million |
| Lockheed Martin | Contracting revenue | $76 billion |
| RTX | Contracting revenue | $35 billion |
The report also calculates median annual revenue growth from 2016 to 2025 at 54 percent for Palantir and 143 percent for Anduril. Those growth rates signal rapid expansion, not that the companies have displaced the defense industry’s largest players: the Brennan Center says the top five traditional primes still dominated defense spending in fiscal year 2025. Axios, citing a 2022 assessment, reported that the Pentagon contracting pool had fallen from 51 aerospace and defense prime contractors to five over three decades. That count concerns primes in the pool, not all defense suppliers.
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Ukraine shows how commercial technology can reach a battlefield
TIME’s February 8, 2024 reporting described Palantir software being used by more than half a dozen Ukrainian agencies to analyze satellite imagery, open-source information, drone footage and field reports for military decision support. It also described private-sector contributions including cloud services, cyber defense, Starlink connectivity and experimental drones. The account is a dated report on wartime use, not a measurement of the present reach of each service.
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Palantir chief executive Alex Karp told TIME that the company’s software was “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine.” That is Karp’s claim about the company’s role, not an independently verified statistic. The distinction matters because software that helps users compile and interpret information does not, on its own, establish who made a targeting decision or what caused a battlefield outcome.
Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation at the time, Mykhailo Fedorov, described the country’s ambition this way: “Our big mission is to make Ukraine the world’s tech R&D lab.” That framing captures the appeal of rapid wartime experimentation, but it should not make a war sound like a controlled test site. TIME also reported skepticism about whether high-tech tools had changed the conflict’s attritional character. Technology operates amid human decisions, adaptation, disruption and the material costs of war.
Why oversight is part of the technology story
Systems that process battlefield data or support autonomous capabilities raise questions beyond whether they work as designed. The Brennan Center identifies limited transparency, the need for testing and human oversight, possible civilian harm and friendly fire, privacy concerns, and the concentration of military AI work among a small group of firms. These are documented risks and governance questions; they are not proof that every named product is autonomous or that a specific system has caused a particular harm.
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- Human responsibility: Who reviews a recommendation or authorizes an action, and can that person understand the system’s limits?
- Transparency: Can lawmakers and the public learn enough about contracts, deployments and failures to evaluate the government’s choices?
- Privacy and concentration: What data are collected and combined, and what are the consequences when a few private providers become difficult to replace?
These questions are also relevant to public spending. Contract ceilings, awards and realized revenue are different measures: a large ceiling signals potential purchasing authority, not a bill already paid by taxpayers. Oversight therefore requires scrutiny of what agencies actually buy, how they test and use it, and whether alternatives and accountability mechanisms remain available.
The bottom line
Billionaire-linked technology firms are helping expand the military’s software, data, satellite and autonomy capabilities through investment, product design and government procurement. Their influence is consequential but not unilateral: agencies award contracts, military users operate systems, firms may partner with traditional primes, and the largest defense contractors still dwarf newer entrants by reported fiscal year 2025 revenue. The central question is not simply who owns the technology, but how its use is tested, governed and made accountable when it becomes part of warfare.
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