Palmer Luckey’s eyes light up, and he talks a mile a minute, when discussing his company’s new recruiting event: the AI Grand Prix.
This is a drone flying contest with a twist. Rather than humans operating drones, the drones must operate autonomously. The humans will be tested on their software-writing skills that cause the drones to outfly their competition.
There are prizes ranging from a $500,000 pot to be spilt amongst the highest-scoring teams, to jobs at Anduril, and a chance to bypass the company’s standard recruiting cycle.
“It was something that I decided we should do,” Anduril founder Luckey said in an interview with TechCrunch. Luckey and the team were meeting to discuss recruitment strategy, he recalled.
Someone suggested sponsoring a drone racing tournament, which was somewhat in line with the company’s previous marketing tactics. For instance, Anduril sponsors the NASCAR Cup Series race known as the Anduril 250.
Luckey generally liked the idea but then said, “‘Guys, that would be a really dumb thing for Anduril to sponsor. The whole point, our entire impetus and reason for being, is this pitch that autonomy has finally advanced to where you don’t have to have a person micromanaging each drone,’” he recalled, then adding, “‘What we should really do is sponsor a race that’s about how well programmers and engineers can make a drone fly itself.’”
After discovering that such an event didn’t exist, the company opted to create it themselves. Interestingly, though, Luckey pointed out that the teams in the AI Grand Prix will not be flying Anduril’s drones, but those built by another defense tech startup: Neros Technologies. According to Luckey, Anduril’s drones are too physically big to run in the contained course in Ohio where the finals will take place.
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“We talked about having teams use Anduril drones, but Anduril doesn’t make any drones that are of the ultra-high speed, very small nature that you would want for a Drone Racing League. It’s mostly bigger stuff,” he said.
Anduril is also partnering with one of the established racing leagues, the Drone Champions League to operate the event, as well as JobsOhio. The final race will take place in Ohio (where Anduril’s key manufacturing facility is located).
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