Half a million dollars in prize money and a direct entry into one of the fastest-growing defense startups in the world: With the AI Grand Prix, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey is breaking with traditional application procedures and instead focusing on athletic competition. Because developing the best possible control solution for autonomous drones can not only earn you a lot of money, but also a direct job interview. All without the usual assessment process.

With his AI Grand Prix, Palmer Luckey wants to host a global autonomous drone racing competition in which the world’s best engineers are challenged to prove their autonomy software under real flight conditions. The teams will compete for prize money of $500,000 and a

job at Anduril.

The AI Grand Prix is an open challenge for university teams and engineers from the United States and around the world. Participants will be equipped with identical hardware from Neros Technologies, a leading American manufacturer of small unmanned aerial systems. Neither human pilots nor hardware modifications are permitted. This ensures that the competition will be decided solely by the development of the best software. The races themselves are organized by the Drone Champions League (DCL), whose AI vector module is integrated into the competition platform.

Job interview at the race track

What sets the AI Grand Prix apart from traditional robotics competitions is its explicit link to Anduril’s recruiting strategy. In an industry where the battle for top talent in computer vision and AI is more aggressive than ever, the race serves as a “proof of concept” on an individual level.

“This is an open challenge,” says Luckey. “If you think you can develop an au…