The Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit awarded Scale AI a multimillion-dollar prototype contract for "Thunderforge," the DOD's flagship program using AI agents for military planning and operations. The program incorporates Anduril and Microsoft as technology partners.
Thunderforge develops AI for modeling and simulation, decision-making support, proposed courses of action, and automated military workflows. Scale AI subsequently won a $99 million Army R&D contract (August 2025) and a $100 million five-year CDAO deal for advanced AI tools for warfighters (September 2025).
Scale AI is part of the consortium of "new generation defense companies" that includes Palantir, Anduril, SpaceX, and OpenAI — all connected through overlapping Thiel/Founders Fund investment networks. Scale AI provides the AI training data infrastructure that makes both Palantir's surveillance analytics and Anduril's autonomous weapons systems possible. The Thunderforge partnership with Anduril directly integrates Scale's data labeling with Anduril's autonomous targeting systems.