Defense technology startup Anduril has launched a global AI drone-racing competition that doubles as a high-stakes recruiting funnel — the winner gets an engineering job interview at the startup and a $500,000 prize.

Anduril’s “AI Grand Prix” is a worldwide competition inviting individuals and teams to build AI systems that can fly high-speed racing drones through professional-grade courses with no human control. The winning drone will autonomously complete the course in the shortest time, with performance determined entirely by the quality of the code guiding its flight.

“This is an open challenge,” Anduril founder Palmer Luckey said in a press release earlier this week. “If you think you can build an autonomy stack that can out-fly the world’s best, show us.”

Competition details and reward

The competition begins in April with two virtual rounds that allow global participation without travel. Successful teams then move to a two-week in-person training and physical qualifier in California in September, culminating in a final race day in November in Ohio. That final will be held at Arsenal-1, Anduril’s planned 5 million-square-foot factory outside Columbus. 

The contest is open to teams of up to eight people or solo entrants from all countries and age groups. Participants under 17 years of age need parental consent and are ineligible for the job portion of the prize, though they can still compete for the racing honors. If a team wins, its members divide up the $500,000 reward.

Instead of relying on conventional applications, Anduril is using the race as a live audition where candidates demonstrate their ability to solve complex autonomy problems. According to the press release, the highest-scoring participant or a single member of the highest-scoring team “will have the chance to bypass Anduril’s standard recruiting cycle and interview directly with hiring managers for relevant open roles.” So one person will be on the fast track to getting a job at Anduril if they or their team wins. 

Anduril’s outside-the-box recruiting efforts

This is not Anduril’s first unconventional talent campaign. Last year, it ran a reverse-psychology campaign called “Don’t work at Anduril,” featuring an ad that mocked tech cliches like nap pods and low-mission work. 

Luckey has previously stated that engineers in the San Francisco Bay Area were “very tech-in, crowd thinker type people.” In September, he told communications specialist Lulu Cheng Meservey that he deliberately recruits from around the country to avoid hiring only Silicon Valley engineers.   

Luckey came up with the idea for the competition, according to the press release. He has a history of breaking from traditional career tracks — he started taking college courses at age 14 and dropped out of California State University at 19 to found Oculus VR in 2012, per Business Insider. He later sold the company to Facebook, now Meta, for $2 billion in 2014. 

In 2017, he co-founded Anduril, a startup now valued at $30.5 billion. 

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