Meta is partnering with Anduril to develop a range of augmented reality (AR) products for US soldiers.

Anduril, in February, took over Microsoft's $22 billion Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program to develop AR headsets for the military. As part of the deal, Microsoft became the "preferred hyperscale cloud" provider for IVAS workloads.

Both Meta and Anduril are building EagleEye, which plans to give soldiers enhanced vision and hearing, as well as interact with AI-powered weapon systems.

The platform will include onboard compute, but will also likely require Edge and cloud services similar to IVAS.

Anduril has deployed its own Edge hardware for other projects, including its Menance line of command-and-control centers and its Sentry tower product line.

Last year, the company said that it would use Oracle Cloud and Edge compute for Lattice. The Lattice platform aims to eventually become a single operating system across disparate weapons and sensors, providing a single plane for understanding and responding to a complex battle scenario. The OCI Roving Edge is also being integrated into Menace.

The Anduril and Meta project will be funded even if it does not immediately win a military contract, the companies said. However, they are competing for the Soldier-Borne Mission Command (SBMC) Next contract, a successor to IVAS. Public RFI documents for SBMC Next note the need for "Cloud or Edge computing."

Palmer Luckey founded virtual reality headset maker Oculus, which was bought by Meta (then Facebook) for $2 billion. He was fired in 2016 following a backlash surrounding his political donations to a pro-Donald Trump group.

“I am glad to be working with Meta once again,” said Luckey. “Of all the areas where dual-use technology can make a difference for America, this is the one I am most excited about. My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that.”