Two major star unicorns unite in endorsement.

Author Li Xinting

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Now, let us first review the classic plot of "Captain America": the frail Brooklyn youth Steve Rogers, after being injected with the super soldier serum developed by Dr. Erskine, gains physical abilities, speed, and recovery far beyond that of ordinary humans, thus becoming Captain America, a symbol of the American spirit.

Marvel has long held the imagination of Americans regarding superpowers. Now, this scene is being realized in reality. However, the ones being transformed are not human soldiers, but working dogs that charge into battle. The role of Dr. Erskine is played by two American tech unicorns.

Recently, a new defense technology company Warhound, founded by American tech entrepreneurs Ben Lamm and Palmer Luckey, announced it has completed a $200 million seed round financing (over 1.3 billion yuan).

The company’s business can be inferred from its name: through genetic engineering technology, it will modify working dogs in the U.S. and provide the enhanced “new dogs” to the U.S. military, law enforcement agencies, and emergency responders. According to official plans, these dogs will eventually undertake extreme tasks that are too dangerous for humans and too complex for machines, such as bomb detection, search operations, and other special operations.

Although the first batch of “new dogs” from Warhound will not hit the market for at least two more years, the capital market has already shown strong interest. This funding round included venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, 8VC, and In-Q-Tel. After the funding round was completed, the project’s valuation reached $1.2 billion (approximately 8 billion yuan).

This is underpinned by the surging capital wave continuously pushing up the defense technology sector in the U.S.

Two major star unicorns "marry"

According to Lamm’s disclosures to the media, his founded company Colossal Biosciences (Colossal) holds equity in Warhound and provides support through technological licensing. Luckey is a partner at Warhound but does not hold equity.

The Warhound project may seem science fiction, but when you put the entrepreneurial experiences of both partners together, it becomes a rather reasonable business intersection.

In 2021, Lamm, who had successfully founded and sold multiple tech companies, co-founded Colossal with renowned geneticist George Church. The goal of this biotech company is to use genetic engineering, cloning, and related reproductive technologies to resurrect extinct species. The species the company currently plans to resurrect include the dire wolf, woolly mammoth, thylacine, dodo, elephant bird, and blue antelope.

If "Jurassic Park" were to be realized in reality, Colossal would probably be the most suitable technological practitioner. However, strictly speaking, Colossal does not bring back extinct species intact, but rather reconstructs some features by researching ancient species' genetic blueprints, identifying key genetic traits, and using gene editing techniques on existing close relatives.

In April 2025, four years after its establishment, Colossal announced it had cultivated three animals with dire wolf genetic characteristics. Although Colossal’s claim of "bringing the dire wolf back to the world" has faced skepticism in academia, the company's technology still attracts capital attention in areas such as species protection. In January 2025, after completing a $200 million Series C financing, Colossal's valuation reached $10.2 billion (approximately 68 billion yuan). In July this year, according to foreign media reports, the company is seeking to advance a new round of financing with a valuation of at least $20 billion (over 130 billion yuan).

As for Warhound’s other partner Luckey, he is the founder of the well-known defense technology company Anduril.

Luckey previously founded the virtual reality device company Oculus VR, which he sold to Meta for $2 billion in 2014. In 2017, Luckey shifted lanes and co-founded Anduril with former employees of the renowned defense technology company Palantir.

The name Anduril is derived from the holy sword of the hero Aragorn in "The Lord of the Rings." Unlike traditional defense companies that produce based on orders, Anduril chooses to invest its own funds in product development before entering the market. The company's products cover autonomous systems, sensors, and military equipment, while its core software platform Lattice can integrate data from multiple endpoints to help operators understand the situational context.

Leveraging orders from militaries in the U.S. and other countries, Anduril completed a staggering $5 billion Series H financing in May this year, with its valuation skyrocketing to $61 billion (over 400 billion yuan), led by firms including a16z and Thrive Capital.

As a project jointly launched by two star unicorns, Warhound's inception is based on the consensus of its two founders. Both Lamm and Luckey believe the current working dog programs in the U.S. face issues: over half of candidate dogs cannot complete training due to hereditary diseases (such as poor vision, cancer, hip dysplasia, etc.). Warhound aims to cultivate working dogs with better health, higher training completion rates, and task completion rates.

During the project implementation process, the businesses of the two companies complement each other: Colossal is responsible for extracting cell lines from excellent working dogs and performing gene editing while adding performance genes and removing unhelpful genes to create a new breed of dog. Anduril provides products such as protective vests and goggles to enhance the situational awareness and coordination abilities of police dogs and their trainers.

Defense sector crowded with VCs

The ambitious Warhound project will not show tangible results for at least another two years. According to Lamm, the first batch of new working dogs incubated by Warhound is expected to be born in early next year and ideally will be put into use within two years. Currently, Warhound's target customers are emergency responders, the Department of Defense, military units, and police forces, although the price of the dogs has not yet been determined.

A project that has not yet delivered substantial results and does not have a closed-loop business model has secured $200 million in funding from the start. This is not only due to the endorsement of the two star unicorns Colossal and Anduril but also cannot be separated from the current financing boom in the defense technology sector.

Data shared by PitchBook and "Defense News" indicate that by 2025, global venture capital transaction volumes in the defense technology sector are expected to soar to a record $49.1 billion (over 320 billion yuan), compared to $27.2 billion the previous year. The investors in Warhound's current financing round include 8VC, which has invested in Anduril, and In-Q-Tel, a venture capital institution supported by the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

The beginning of this wave of investment in U.S. defense technology can roughly be traced back to 2017, which was also the start of Trump's first presidential term. That year, the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy labeled China and Russia as strategic competitors faced by the U.S. As U.S. defense strategy put great power competition at its core, innovations in commercial technology areas such as AI, autonomous systems, and advanced sensors were quickly adapted into the military domain. Coupled with the increasingly tense geopolitical situation, the rising defense budgets of various countries, and the validated value of emerging defense technology products in real combat, a large amount of hot money began to flood into this sector.

Currently, renowned venture capital firms such as a16z, Sequoia Capital, 8VC, and Thrive Capital have invested in defense technology projects. Among them, a16z even established a specialized fund called "American Dynamism" in 2023, focusing on key industries such as defense, aerospace, and manufacturing.

Anduril, at the center of this wave, has a financing trajectory that mirrors the sector's heat. In its founding year of 2017, Anduril received only $17.5 million in seed funding, with a valuation of less than $100 million. By May of this year, Anduril's Series H financing had surged to $5 billion, with its valuation skyrocketing to $61 billion (over 400 billion yuan), and total financing exceeding $11 billion.

Alongside Anduril, other companies have also emerged, such as Shield AI, developing AI pilot software and drones, Saronic, developing autonomous surface vessels, and Castelion, developing hypersonic strike missiles. The Warhound project can be seen as an extension of U.S. defense technology into the biotechnology field.

Interestingly, in Warhound's financing announcement, alongside genetic editing technology, another term has frequently appeared—supply chain.

Warhound emphasizes that currently, over half of candidate dogs in the U.S. military working dog program do not complete training, and the excessive reliance on overseas breeders makes "the U.S. have to depend on the limited resources of foreign supply chains." Therefore, Warhound hopes to improve the current program levels through cutting-edge engineering technology from within the U.S. so that in the future, there is “no need to bear the waiting times, price fluctuations, or geopolitical risks of foreign supply chains.”

Thus, while it is indeed astonishing that Captain America’s storyline walks into reality, from a deeper logical perspective, Warhound seems more like a curious product born from Trumpism.

Originated from Investment in China

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