Tech
Anduril has invented a wild new drone-flying contest where jobs are the prize
Anduril founder Palmer Luckey’s eyes light up, and he talks a mile a minute, when discussing his company’s new recruiting event: the AI Grand Prix.
This is a drone-flying contest with a twist. Rather than humans operating drones, the drones must operate autonomously. The humans will be tested on their software-writing skills that cause the drones to outfly their competition.
There are prizes ranging from a $500,000 pot to be spilt amongst the highest-scoring teams, to jobs at Anduril and a chance to bypass the company’s standard recruiting cycle.
“It was something that I decided we should do,” Luckey said in an interview with TechCrunch. Luckey and the team were meeting to discuss recruitment strategy, he recalled.
Someone suggested sponsoring a drone-racing tournament, which was somewhat in line with the company’s previous marketing tactics. For instance, Anduril sponsors the NASCAR Cup Series race known as the Anduril 250.
Luckey generally liked the idea but then told the team, “‘Guys, that would be a really dumb thing for Anduril to sponsor. The whole point, our entire impetus and reason for being, is this pitch that autonomy has finally advanced to where you don’t have to have a person micromanaging each drone,’” he recalled, then added, “‘What we should really do is sponsor a race that’s about how well programmers and engineers can make a drone fly itself.’”
After discovering that such an event didn’t exist, the company opted to create it themselves. Interestingly, though, Luckey pointed out that the teams in the AI Grand Prix will not be flying Anduril’s drones, but those built by another defense tech startup: Neros Technologies. According to Luckey, Anduril’s drones are too physically big to run in the contained course in Ohio where the finals will take place.
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“We talked about having teams use Anduril drones, but Anduril doesn’t make any drones that are of the ultra-high speed, very small nature that you would want for a Drone Racing League. It’s mostly bigger stuff,” he said.
Anduril is also partnering with one of the established racing leagues, the Drone Champions League, to operate the event, as well as JobsOhio. The final race will take place in Ohio (where Anduril’s key manufacturing facility is located).
Although Luckey is clearly excited about how fun the event will be, he won’t be a racer himself. “I absolutely will be there,” he says, but “it’s going to be about who can build the best software to pilot these drones.”
He smiled and said, “I’m not actually a very good software programmer. I’m more of a hardware guy. I’m an electromechanical and optical guy, and I know just enough about coding to glue stuff together in a way that works for my prototypes.”
(Luckey calls Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf “our de facto lead software brains” at the company.)
The founder is hoping for at least 50 teams, and already has interest from multiple universities, he said. Should this competition be a successful event, the plan is to expand it into races with the other types of autonomous vehicles.
“We are starting with these quadcopter racing drones, which is what people expect from drone racing. However, we want to be, in the future, applying AI racing to other platforms as well,” he said.
Underwater AI racing, ground AI racing, potentially even AI racing of spacecraft were some of the ideas Luckey shared.
The contest is open to all international entrants, excluding teams from Russia.
“The difference with Russia is they are actively engaged in the act of invading Europe,” he said.
The concern is that the people qualified to enter such a race may also be working for their nation’s military. “I would love to have everybody, but we’re not the Olympics,” he added.
Luckey said the event was following the lead from the World Cup, which has also excluded Russia.
Interestingly, teams from China (home to a lot of autonomous engineering) are welcome, despite it being the country that U.S. autonomous weapons hawks often name as their biggest fear.
Should a Chinese team win, the prize of a job at Anduril, which makes weapons used by the U.S. military, would not be a given. “If you work for the Chinese military, you’re not going to be allowed to get a job at Anduril,” Luckey said. Certain laws apply, he pointed out. In fact, there will still be some interviews and a qualification process for all the job candidates.
The competition will take place across three qualifying rounds beginning in April, with the final Grand Prix race scheduled for November.
Tech
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Tech
Uber to buy delivery arm of Turkey’s Getir
Uber has agreed to acquire the delivery business of Turkey’s Getir, once one of the biggest success stories of the country’s startup ecosystem, the company announced on Monday.
The deal will see Uber paying $335 million at the outset to purchase Getir’s food delivery business. The ride-hailing giant will also pay $100 million for a 15% stake in Getir’s grocery, retail, and water delivery business, and said it would complete the acquisition of the division over the next few years.
Uber is buying the business from Getir’s biggest shareholder, the Emirati sovereign wealth fund Mubadala. The investment firm was reportedly seeking to sell its stake in the company last year.
The deal comes after a turbulent few years for Getir, which once enjoyed a valuation of $12 billion, that saw the startup scale down its operations massively. The company launched to great traction in 2015, and invested aggressively to expand its operations in the U.S. and Europe, both organically and via acquisitions, especially during the pandemic.
But after the pandemic lockdowns eased, broader consumer demand for food and grocery delivery also wavered, and Getir chose to cut its losses in 2024, shutting shop and laying off thousands of staff in the U.S., U.K., and Europe in order to focus on business back home.
Nearly a year ago, the company went through a struggle for control over a restructuring plan proposed by Mubadala. The plan was opposed by one of Getir’s co-founders, who eventually sued to fight the “illegal coup,” but a Dutch court rejected the founder’s appeals.
The company has raised a total of $2.40 billion so far, according to PitchBook. Documents filed by Getir in court last year show the company valued its group assets at $374 million.
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“This transaction reflects the strength of the business and the progress it has made, particularly over the last year,” Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi, deputy group CEO at Mubadala, said in a statement.
Uber said it would combine the new unit’s services with Trendyol Go, a food and grocery delivery service in Turkey that the ride-hail giant bought for $700 million last May. Uber said Getir’s food delivery business alone recorded gross bookings of more than $1 billion in 2025, up 50% from a year earlier.
The deal follows a strong showing by Uber’s delivery business in the fourth quarter, reporting revenue of $4.89 billion, up 30% from a year earlier. The company said Europe, the Middle East, and Asia proved the fastest-growing regions for the business in 2026.
Tech
Discord to roll out age verification next month for full access to its platform
Discord is rolling out age verification globally starting next month, the company announced on Monday. All users will be put into a “teen-appropriate experience” by default unless they prove they’re adults. Age verification will be required to change certain settings and access age-restricted content.
Discord users will need to be confirmed as adults in order to unblur sensitive content or turn off the setting, and only adults can access age-restricted channels, servers, and app commands. Additionally, messages from people a user may not know are routed to a separate inbox by default, and only verified adults can modify this setting.
People will receive warning prompts for friend requests from users they may not know, and only adults will be able speak onstage in servers.
To complete age verification, users need to either complete a facial age estimation or submit an ID to Discord’s vendor partners. The platform plans to add more options in the future. Discord notes that some users may be asked to use multiple methods when additional information is needed to assign an age group.
The facial age estimation requires video selfies, which Discord says never leave your device. Additionally, the company says IDs submitted to its vendor partners are deleted quickly and, in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.
It’s worth noting that Discord disclosed last October that around 70,000 users may have had sensitive data, such as their government ID photos, exposed after hackers breached a third-party vendor that the platform uses for age-related appeals. The breach reflected digital rights activists’ concerns over the use of age checks as a way to make the internet “safer.”
Discord’s global launch of age verification follows the company’s decision to establish age checks for users in the U.K. and Australia last year.
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“Rolling out teen-by-default settings globally builds on Discord’s existing safety architecture, giving teens strong protections while allowing verified adults flexibility,” said Savannah Badalich, head of product policy at Discord, in a press release. “We design our products with teen safety principles at the core and will continue working with safety experts, policymakers, and Discord users to support meaningful, long term wellbeing for teens on the platform.”
The announcement mirrors similar moves made by other online platforms, reflecting growing international efforts to strengthen child safety. Most recently, Roblox introduced mandatory facial verification for access to chats on its platform. Last July, YouTube launched its age-estimation technology in the U.S. to identify teen users in order to provide a more age-appropriate experience.
Discord’s age-verification changes will begin in early March, and both new and existing users will need to verify their age to access age-restricted content.
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