Drip of the Week: Before the IPO — What Anduril Shareholders Should Know

Welcome to the Drip of the Week — your quick hit on companies we like, what’s changing across the Unicorn economy, and how those changes impact employees and founders shaping the future. 

Spotlight: Spark — Drip 4. Liquidity & Diversification

We’re excited to continue our 4-part Spark series. Spark is our solution built specifically for employees and companies that have publicly filed an S-1.

Drip 1: Higher Advance Rate
Drip 2: Lower Cost of Capital
Drip 3: Tax Optimization
Drip 4: Liquidity & Diversification

Year of the … Liquidity Event?

2026 feels like the year that employees and shareholders are looking for both liquidity and diversification. While leading AI and non-AI companies continue to grow in value, shareholders feel confident in the outlook for the leading technology companies. They are looking for liquidity, and yet don’t want to part with any of their shares. We hear things like, “I would like to hold on to my SpaceX shares until I die”. You can replace SpaceX with Anthropic, OpenAI, Kraken, Revolut… At the same time, many people are becoming nervous about the market generally and are seeking diversification. Uncertainty around wars, geopolitical conditions, and economic impacts from the rapid development of AI weighs heavily on the minds of those with large concentrated positions. 

Why Spark Matters for Shareholders

Higher advance rates and lower pricing enable shareholders to achieve liquidity and implement diversification strategies earlier. Liquid Stock’s solutions enable shareholders to pair public diversification strategies with private “hold and defer” strategies for employees who want to gift their private company shares to their estate in decades while still sleeping well at night.

Company of the Week: Anduril

The world just got a reminder that geopolitics still moves markets. The escalation with Iran has pushed investors back into defense. Legacy primes have rallied sharply this year, with Lockheed Martin up 34% and Northrop Grumman up 26%, and oil has been whipsawing. 

The message from markets is simple: defense is back, and uncertainty is the norm. But the more interesting question isn’t what happens to the old primes. It’s what happens to the new ones. Modern conflict increasingly favors software, autonomy, and networks of inexpensive systems over a handful of billion-dollar platforms. Ukraine proved it with drones. Missile defense economics in the Middle East are reinforcing it.

Anduril sits squarely in the strike zone of that shift. Founded by Palmer Luckey, Anduril is building the first new prime contractor in decades, one designed around AI, autonomous systems, and software-defined warfare. If the Cold War primes were built around hardware, the next generation may be built around software controlling hardware. Which is why companies like Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX are increasingly viewed not as defense contractors, but as defense technology platforms.

And if geopolitics remains a structural feature of the next decade, the biggest winners may not just be the companies building fighter jets. They may be the ones building the operating system for the new global battlefield.

What all of that adds up to is a generational type of company that option holders and shareholders may consider holding for generations. Exercise strategy, tax planning, and diversification should not wait for the IPO announcement, as liquidity and tax planning could materially alter the ending net worth. If you know or work with Anduril employees or shareholders, this is the moment to start the conversation.