Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is back, revolutionizing the war with a $14 billion startup. And this time he wants you to like him.

Unlike most polished, suited, and scripted defense executives, Lucky is brutally honest and undeniably awkward. In language that is sometimes vulgar, he discusses his high-profile firing from Facebook. Joyfully explains his various rivalries. and easily answers questions that may perplex the average executive.

So it’s almost surprising to hear Lucky admit how much he cares about how the world perceives him. “I’ll be making things for the rest of my career,” he says in a candid interview. good luck. “For me to work, I need to convince people to work with me.”

As a teenager – after creating the revolutionary Oculus gaming headset, selling it to Facebook (now called Meta) for $2 billion in 2014, then facing an embarrassing public ouster from the company he created, Lucky is now the country’s runs a private defense startup larger than And Donald Trump’s longtime supporters are poised to become increasingly powerful over the next few years.

Lucky and I spoke from a Miami hotel room a week before the US election before heading to a conference via Zoom. In a week, Trump will be on his way to victory. Lucky sits well with Andoril’s fleet of military contracts worth more than $1 billion and the Russia-Ukraine war.

Luckey has long supported Trump — at least since 2011, when he said he wrote to Trump asking him to run for office, and during this year’s election cycle, during which he Donated $400,000 to Trump’s campaign, according to the filing, meaning he could be the ear of the most powerful man in the world.

What does he want to do now? Work on a new headset project.

Luckey says he’s envisioned applying Anduril’s AI-powered 3D battlefield mapping platform Lattice to this type of hardware since the company’s inception, and it’s the original 2017 for investors. The pitch was one of Deck’s ideas.

Maggie Shannon Fortune

“I wanted to prove I wasn’t a one-hit wonder,” says Lucky, 32. That I was still somebody.

But Lucky’s investors were wary of the gaming headset tycoon’s motives, he recalls. He initially thought “it’s going to turn into a pissing contest with Facebook” and encouraged him to go in a different direction and “focus on what you think the country is doing.” What’s most important to you—not most important to your ego.” Lackey took the advice and focused on other projects, such as autonomous surveillance towers used on US borders, and drones deployed in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Microsoft had been developing its HoloLens headset for the US military since 2018. Endorel announced in September that it was ready to improve the performance of combat goggles, in a deal with the Pentagon that could earn up to $21.9 billion. Two companies over the next decade. Jali pulls in various sensory data to create a 3D battlefield map in the headset, helping soldiers see how to safely move from one location to another or distinguishing allies from enemies on the battlefield.

Other attempts over the years to incorporate headset hardware into military applications have not worked. For example, the Army’s NetWarrior system ditched plans for a headset a decade ago, which was based on a smartphone. The problem, Luckey says, is that the data flowing into the devices — such as 2D maps — isn’t useful enough, and he points out that Andorel’s Lattice system, which pulls data from satellite feeds, drones and infrared imaging units. Yes, it will change that.

After his trial with Oculus, it’s clear Lucky is happy to be back in the headset business. It was terminated by Facebook in 2017 after a donation to a pro-Trump group led to speculation that it was linked to members who had made racist comments online. Amid the backlash, Lucky issued an apology. But he now regrets letting other people “dictate my press strategy” and persuading him not to push back against news coverage that he says is “completely fabricated.”

Seven years later, Lucky says the ordeal has profoundly affected his perspective on business and people. He admits he’s always asking himself how things could go wrong: “What’s the worst I can do with this person or this company? If it goes south, I’m all over it.” What’s the worst thing that could happen? And he usually goes into the conversation thinking, “This person is trying to stop me.”

In his new line of work, that approach has “worked very well,” he says. Andorel has become the leader of a new pack of tech companies that are using private capital to innovate, rather than waiting for funding from government contracts to develop new technologies, along with longtime incumbents such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. is challenging. Endorel won a nearly $1 billion contract with the U.S. Special Operations Command for counter drones through 2022 and, earlier this year, a $250 million Defense Department contract for one of its interceptor systems. It works closely with the US Department of Defense, the UK Ministry of Defense and the Australian Defense Force. Luckey said Andoril drones have been used in Ukraine, but its technology has not been used in Gaza. And Andoril continues to come out with new products — most recently a family of combat drones called the Bolt.

Thanks Andorel

Brian Schumpf, a veteran of the intelligence software startup Palantir, founded Endorel and serves as its CEO, but it’s Lucky who is the best-known of its executives and often the company’s public face. acts as, what they call “propagandang”. In conferences and in the media.

Lucky admits that what he is propagandizing for is his own reputation. “I realized very late that my reputation is actually very important,” he says. “I can’t do anything of value if I don’t care what people think of me… and that’s what I’m most afraid of right now.” He does it in his own bombastic style, of course: He’ll debate X with critics of Andorel drones, hurling vulgar insults like “r —-d” at them (and others).

Lucky, however, rejects the notion that he is a bigot. After defending himself on Facebook, Lucky recalled, “I allowed people to believe things that were completely false. And if they thought I was an anti-Semitic, hateful, racist person who Paying people to harass people on the internet, of course they don’t want to work with me.

“I don’t care if people think I’m cool or cool or fashionable,” he explains. “But I care if they think I’m ethical. I care if they think I’m a reliable partner who’s not going to stab them in the back. I want people to understand that I’m Loyal to people who share a common cause with me, and that I won’t turn on them. And as long as I can convince enough people of that, I don’t mind the rest.

This article appears in the December 2024/January 2025 issue. good luck With the headline “Palmer Luckey, What a Revolutionary in War Fears.”