Anduril is taking over Microsoft's $22 billion IVAS project
Should Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey have his way, the U.S. Army's effort to arm troops with futuristic, mixed-reality headsets will involve a consortium of companies pumping out "glasses that look a lot like the Oakleys you wear every day all the way up to things that look like an Iron Man helmet."
Why it matters: Anduril is taking over Microsoft's multibillion-dollar Integrated Visual Augmentation System project, pending government approval. The announcement was made this morning.
The former will assume responsibility for production, future hardware and software, and delivery. The latter's cloud and artificial intelligence offerings will serve as the digital backbone.
The companies buddied up lastan year to bring the Lattice software suite aboard IVAS.
Context: Luckey hit it big with virtual reality and Oculus, which sold to Facebook for $2 billion.
"I have long said ... that you were going to see a headset on the head of every soldier long before you see a headset on the head of every civilian," Luckey told reporters this week.