Secret flights and texts to the governor: Inside the making of the Anduril deal

It began with a text.

On a busy Tuesday in Annapolis last December, Gov. Wes Moore got a message from Matt Grimm, co-founder of upstart defense technology company Anduril Industries. Earlier that month, over lunch in California, the governor had met with Grimm and other executives.

Now, Anduril was searching for a spot to spend billions on a new manufacturing facility. Might Maryland be interested?

Over the next several months, state and Baltimore County officials worked quietly with Anduril executives and Tradepoint Atlantic, a sprawling logistics hub in Sparrows Point, to craft what could be Maryland’s largest employment surge in years.

The dealmaking included a Christmas Eve phone call, a surreptitious cross-country flight, a chilly January site visit — and meetings over crabs at Costas Inn, a favorite Dundalk haunt. Those in the know couldn’t even tell others within their own departments.

The Banner spoke to local, state and federal officials, as well as company leaders, and reviewed public statements to compile this account.

Private talks culminated with an Oct. 6 reveal that Anduril would build a $3.7 billion facility in a corner of southeastern Baltimore County, creating what leaders say will be 3,172 permanent jobs. An event celebrating the news sparked a political skirmish between rivals Moore, a Democrat, and President Donald Trump, a Republican, over who gets credit for the long-awaited return of manufacturing jobs to a once-proud shipyard. The White House took the governor off the speaking program, and he decided not to go.

But many relationships and decisions contributed to Anduril’s decision to build Arsenal-2 in Maryland. It would be the company’s second massive manufacturing facility, after Arsenal-1 in Ohio.

Two crucial factors underpinned the deal: Trump has prioritized domestic shipbuilding during his second White House stint, and the U.S. Navy selected Anduril for a $2.9 billion contract to build components of attack submarines. And the now-decade-long redevelopment of the former Bethlehem Steel site — shepherded by Tradepoint Atlantic and boosted by hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local tax incentives — made a vacant shipyard competitive for a major investment like Anduril’s.

Moore understood the possibilities when his phone pinged Dec. 16. He immediately texted back and then got on the phone with his chief administrative officer, Manny Welsh.

“I was like, ‘Manny, we’re not losing this,’” Moore recalled in an interview. “And then we, and he, got to work.”

Maryland connections

The December text exchange touched off a flurry of calls and meetings between Maryland officials and Anduril executives. That included Chris Brose, the company’s president and chief strategy officer.

It was a reunion of sorts. When Brose and Moore were a few years out of college in 2006, they worked in the office of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Moore was a White House fellow and Brose was a speechwriter. Moore also met Anduril co-founder Brian Schimpf in the summer of 2025 at the Sun Valley Conference, an Idaho retreat for power brokers that’s been nicknamed “billionaire summer camp.”

As talks grew serious, Moore brought state officials, including Tom Sadowski, head of the Maryland Economic Development Corp., and Commerce Secretary Harry Coker, into the conversation. As officials learned of Anduril’s preferences in terms of acreage, water depth and access to highways and rail, one location stood out.

“Tradepoint was a natural candidate,” Welsh said.

A group now known as Redwood Holdings, owned by billionaire Jim Davis, purchased the bulk of the former Bethlehem Steel site in 2014. It worked closely with then-County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, who had formed a task force to brainstorm the future of the site. They’d sketched a map — including warehousing, manufacturing and shipping — of the polluted industrial site’s potential future.

Redwood’s team then spent millions cleaning up the brownfield and began building a logistics hub. Tradepoint Atlantic is now a 3,300-acre crossroads for goods ranging from T-shirts to luxury cars.

Warehouses spanning millions of square feet have sprung up. A shipping container terminal will soon join them.

Over the years, the state and the county have financially supported Tradepoint’s growth. Former County Executive Don Mohler and his successor, Johnny Olszewski Jr., paved the way for the county to spend $78 million in 2018 on roads and water and sewer infrastructure.

But Mohler and others longed for the return of a significant manufacturer offering high-paying jobs to complete the picture.

“If you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle, this is the piece you looked for on the floor,” Mohler said.

The County Council recently approved a 50-year tax break — the largest in county history — for the Sparrows Point Container Terminal, a joint venture between Tradepoint and TiL, or Terminal Investment Limited. MSC, the world’s largest shipping company, is the majority owner of TiL.

The tax break was finalized Dec. 15, just before Anduril reached out to Moore.

“That was a huge component as we were looking at this site. It was perfect timing,” David Frash, Anduril’s director of state and local government affairs, said during testimony at a council meeting this month.

A need for stealth

Anduril had been crisscrossing the country, scouring Google Maps and hiring outside firms to identify an ideal slice of land along the East Coast or Gulf Coast. None was quite right.

The company had previously considered Tradepoint’s shipyard, but that land wasn’t originally available. Half of the shipyard had been spoken for by US Wind, which planned to manufacture turbines.

When a potential option elsewhere faced a hurdle in December, though, Anduril was left scrambling.

It reconsidered Maryland. On Christmas Eve, Anduril and Tradepoint officials held a phone call.

By then, with Trump taking aim at wind energy, that US Wind land had become available for negotiation.

In January, Anduril toured the 187-acre shipyard. Brose and William Noderer, the company’s general manager for shipbuilding, met with Moore in his Annapolis office.

On March 9, officials with the county and the state’s commerce department took a Southwest flight for a 20-hour visit to Anduril’s headquarters in Costa Mesa, California. The contingent had to be stealthy, said Jonathan Sachs, the county’s director of economic and workforce development.

“It’s still so weird to say their name out loud,” Sachs said of Anduril.

Negotiations continued. Moore went to Washington on March 12 to make a formal pitch at Anduril’s office.

Maryland expected that it was competing with other states but didn’t know what incentives others were offering.

Ultimately, county officials, including Sachs and Tucker Cavanagh — Baltimore County’s deputy administrative officer — worked with state officials, including Welsh, to put together nearly $500 million in tax breaks.

The county has approved $210 million in personal property tax breaks, and the state has promised to contribute $75 million over the next six years for construction of the facility and a training center for workers. That funding is subject to approval by the Maryland General Assembly.

Another roughly $200 million in incentives is expected to come from existing state economic development programs.

Maryland submitted its “best and final” incentive letter in April. Anduril told the state in May that it chose Tradepoint.

In late May, Sachs and Baltimore County Executive Kathy Klausmeier took Anduril officials out for crabs at Costas Inn. After the group ate, one executive asked Sachs for recommendations on nearby neighborhoods to live in.

The deal wasn’t ironclad, though. The Navy hadn’t finalized its contract with Anduril. The federal government still needed to approve the Tradepoint site — no guarantee, given a history of hostility between Trump and Moore. The two politicians have tangled in recent years over crime in Baltimore and the Francis Scott Key Bridge rebuild.

But shortly after Labor Day, the site was approved by the Navy. Brose, Anduril’s chief strategy officer, called Moore to deliver the news.

“I probably said a whole lot of f-bombs, and I was so excited,” Moore said. “I mean, it’s the biggest investment in our state’s history.”

The few members of the governor’s team involved in the deal celebrated with a “drink or four,” one said.

Moore v. Trump

Anduril was founded in 2017 by then-24-year-old Palmer Luckey — who had already created and sold a billion-dollar virtual reality company — and former employees of software company Palantir. The company quickly raised funds to construct high-tech unmanned weapons.

While fellow co-founders Grimm and Schimpf often donate to Democratic candidates, Luckey is a major Trump donor whom the president called a friend at the Sparrows Point event. Luckey has often made waves with bold goals and beliefs. This month, he said he is in favor of “public and brutal” executions.

He and Anduril swiftly gained a following as disruptors in the defense industry. The company’s worth has skyrocketed to $90 billion.

Anduril is known for creating autonomous weapons, but the Navy approached the company in 2024 about constructing components for more traditional vessels: Virginia-class submarines, a longtime staple of the naval fleet.

In the lead-up to the Oct. 6 announcement, Moore talked with reporters about it and expected to speak at the event. Instead, the White House told the governor he could attend but not speak.

Moore said he “was not going to sit there for a deal that we got done and then have him on a stage taking potshots.”

He told his team: “There is no discussion. I’m not going.”

A White House spokesperson later criticized Moore for making the announcement “about himself,” calling him a “diva.”

The dustup left elected officials with an eye for optics scrambling. Some Democrats attended. Others, including members of Congress, skipped.

Julian Jones, the Democratic nominee for Baltimore County executive, was a few minutes from the site when he learned from The Banner that Moore would no longer be speaking. He and an aide pulled into a Royal Farms parking lot.

“I thought about it real hard,” he said, “and I decided not to go.”

Meanwhile, an aged building became the setting for a sort of cocktail party. Hundreds of sailors, elected leaders and industry officials celebrated with passed appetizers as Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth flew in aboard Marine One.

“The storied grounds of Sparrows Point will never fall silent again,” Trump declared.

Anduril officials said the company plans to start construction this year, hire its first workers in 2029, and open the shipyard in 2030. It will make pieces of the 460-foot nuclear-powered submarines, which cost about $5 billion each.

The company expects the facility to be fully built in 2034. Anduril has said the thousands of jobs there will be high-paying and won’t require college degrees.

When someone with eastern Baltimore County roots talks about Bethlehem Steel, the nostalgia runs deep. The mill helped build the likes of the Golden Gate Bridge. Warships, too.

“The same way people talk about how, ‘Oh, my granddaddy worked for Bethlehem Steel,’ we’re going to hear the same thing about Anduril,” Moore said. “And that’s really exciting to me.”