The Trump administration just handed a huge deal to a defense firm backed by the brother of the president’s son-in-law.
The Defense Department has announced a new contract with Anduril Industries, Inc.—which counts Joshua Kushner, younger brother of Jared Kushner, among its major funders—to provide up to $20 billion in military equipment and systems.
Large portions of the full contract notice, reviewed by the Daily Beast, are redacted. It nevertheless shows the Pentagon has now effectively agreed to treat Anduril as a go-to resource for computer systems, military hardware, and data infrastructure, as well as support and training for those services, over the next decade.
Joshua Kushner, who at 40 is five years younger than his elder brother Jared, is one of the wealthiest venture capitalists of his generation, boasting an estimated net worth of $5.2 billion. He is married to supermodel Karlie Kloss, with whom he has three children. They share space in at least three luxury properties in Manhattan, Miami, and Malibu.
Joshua holds stakes in Anduril, a private tech company valued at upward of $60 billion, through his New York venture capital firm, Thrive Capital, which he founded in 2009. Thrive has not publicly disclosed its exact holding in Anduril, but co-led a $4 billion funding round for the group just days before the Pentagon announced the new deal earlier in March.
Jared, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, previously held a stake in Thrive, but sold his shares following the 2016 election to avoid potential conflicts of interest while serving as a senior adviser during the president’s first stint in the White House.
The elder Kushner holds no official position in the second Trump administration. Trump has, nevertheless, repeatedly tapped him to help with negotiations in areas related to defense, including the wars between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Hamas, and the U.S. and Iran.
At the heart of the deal appears to be the group’s Lattice OS, a cutting-edge AI command system that works at high speed to detect and respond to real-world threats without requiring any human input. Other products manufactured by the company include interceptor and surveillance drones, sentry towers, and loitering munitions, capable of autonomously hunting down and eliminating targets across hundreds of miles.
The Pentagon awarded the contract to the Kushner-backed group under what’s known as a “sole source” framework, allowing the department to sidestep normal requirements for open competition among potential contractors if it determines that only one company can do the job.
Officials did post a public notice in December, inviting vendors to come forward and discuss the opportunity, but gave them just three weeks to respond over the holiday period. Only one of the four companies that got in touch replied to the DOD’s follow-up queries, confirming it could not match Anduril’s offerings. The Pentagon says it took silence from the remaining three, one of which turned out not to be a defense contractor at all, as a sign they couldn’t either.
The Kushners are not Anduril’s only link to the White House. Palmer Luckey, who co-founded the group in 2017, has hosted high-value fundraisers for Trump, one of which charged $100,000 per ticket, and donated to dozens of Republican candidates and committees. His co-founder, Trae Stephens, served on Trump’s transition team ahead of the president’s first term, and was reportedly being considered for a top Pentagon job in the run-up to his second.
Trump’s son-in-law, in addition to his informal role as the president’s mediator in war negotiations, has also been keenly involved in broader diplomatic talks across the Middle East. His sizable interests in the region have raised alarm among critics, given that he is not subject to the transparency or oversight requirements typically applied to formal government roles.
Jared Kushner is currently facing a congressional inquiry after Democrats accused him of soliciting billions from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and other Gulf monarchies while leading diplomatic negotiations with both Russia and Iran. The White House has called that probe the “same, tired narrative,” and said the extended Trump family member was “generously volunteering his time to advance the president’s agenda.”
It follows reports that officials in Qatar, whose royal family gifted Trump a $400 million Boeing 747 jetliner last year, feared they would receive unfavorable treatment from any future MAGA administration if they did not invest in Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners. Qatar had initially declined when the firm launched in 2021, but ultimately poured in around $200 million ahead of Trump’s re-election.
Trump’s own sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have also significantly expanded their footprint in the region during the president’s second term. Dar Global, a London firm with ties to the Saudi royal family, has pumped more than $20 million into the Trump Organization over the past year in licensing fees alone for two Trump towers in Saudi Arabia.
A government ethics watchdog noted in February that the family’s foreign property income now looks set to “explode,” potentially doubling in Trump’s second term alone the more than $430 million already earned from overseas developments over the prior decade, with much of that income from real estate developments in the Gulf region.
The Anduril deal also comes amid a string of accusations that figures close to the Trump administration have sought to profit from the president’s increasing aggression on the world stage, such as reports that Trump’s sons have made hefty investments in the drone industry over the past few weeks as his war in the Middle East ramps up demand in the sector.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced allegations last month that one of his financial brokers had inquired about defense sector investments in the weeks before Trump launched his attacks on Iran, raising concerns of possible insider trading. The Pentagon dismissed those reports as “entirely false and fabricated.”
The Daily Beast has further revealed that Senator Markwayne Mullin, Trump’s pick to replace Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary, purchased substantial stocks in defense contractors and oil giants just five days before the president’s lightning invasion of Venezuela earlier in January.
Mullin was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee at the time, which receives classified briefings on U.S. military operations. He is likely to have made up to $35,000 from those investments, which will only have climbed further following the outbreak of war with Iran.
More broadly, multiple reports suggest patterns of suspicious trading activity around Trump’s war-related decisions, including $580 million in oil futures flooding the market roughly 16 minutes before the president announced a pause in strikes on Iranian power plants, as well as unusual surges in wagers on Polymarket, a cryptocurrency betting platform, ahead of attacks against both the Islamic regime and Venezuela.
A spokesperson for the Trump administration previously denied that there was anything untoward behind those bets, stating “the only special interest guiding the Trump Administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”
The White House declined to comment on the Anduril deal. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said the department “awards contracts based on merit, partnering with U.S.-based companies to equip our warfighters with the world’s most advanced and reliable capabilities.”
Anduril, Thrive Capital, and Jared Kushner’s representatives have been approached for comment, but did not respond in advance of this story’s publication.
