Palmer Luckey

In January 2026, Palmer Luckey publicly supported President Trump's plan to limit pay for defense contractor leaders and crack down on the defense industry, telling Bloomberg TV 'I think it's even good maybe to scare people sometimes.' He revealed he pays himself only $100,000 per year at Anduril. While noting some changes 'might not necessarily help the defense space,' he stood by Trump's policies despite the president's rebuke of defense companies and their CEOs.

On December 26, 2025, China imposed sanctions on Palmer Luckey along with 9 other US defense executives and 20 companies for their role in US arms sales to Taiwan. Luckey is barred from entering China and from conducting business there. Anduril had jointly manufactured the Barracuda 500 autonomous cruise missile with Taiwan's National Chung-Shan Institute. Luckey publicly celebrated the sanctions, telling Fox Business 'It's an award I'm very, very proud to win.'

In a May 2025 60 Minutes interview, Palmer Luckey publicly defended autonomous weapons that operate using AI without human control, arguing 'it is too morally fraught an area, it is too critical of an area to not apply the best technology available.' He directly opposed UN Secretary-General Guterres' call for a treaty banning autonomous lethal weapons by 2026, dismissing the concern. He also stated 'There's no moral high ground to making a land mine that can't tell the difference between a school bus full of children and Russian armor.' Anduril's systems include weapons that can identify, select, and engage targets autonomously.

Palmer Luckey has been one of Silicon Valley's most prolific Republican donors. He donated $100,000 to Trump's 2017 inauguration via shell company 'Wings of Time,' hosted Trump fundraisers at his Newport Beach home, and donated $400,000+ to Trump's 2024 campaign. His 2020 cycle donations exceeded $1.7M to Republican causes including Take Back the House PAC, RNC, and Trump Victory. OpenSecrets records 833+ donation entries as of 2025.

Palmer Luckey personally directed Anduril to deploy personnel and autonomous weapons systems to Ukraine within two weeks of Russia's February 2022 invasion. Anduril's Ghost drones were deployed from the second week of the war. Luckey stated on X that 'Anduril had people/hardware in Ukraine two weeks into the invasion. Our autonomous weapons have destroyed hundreds of millions worth of Russia's war machine.' The UK MoD also contracted Anduril to supply nearly GBP 30 million in Altius loitering munitions to Ukraine in March 2025.

In October 2020, Palmer Luckey hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump's re-election campaign at his home in Lido Isle, Newport Beach, California, with the president in attendance. Ticket prices ranged from $2,800 per person to $150,000 per couple. Luckey also donated $200,000 to Take Back the House 2020 PAC, $106,500 to the RNC, and $150,000 to the Trump Victory fund in the same cycle.

Anduril Industries deployed its Lattice AI-powered surveillance tower system along the US-Mexico border under contracts with Customs and Border Protection. The towers use AI to detect and track people crossing the border. Civil liberties groups raised concerns about the surveillance infrastructure's implications for privacy and immigration enforcement.

After leaving Meta in 2017, Palmer Luckey founded Anduril Industries in 2017, a defense technology company building autonomous drones, AI-powered surveillance towers (Lattice), and counter-drone systems for the US military and border patrol. Anduril has won billions in defense contracts including a $1B+ USSOCOM contract and was valued at $14B+ by 2024.

Palmer Luckey was terminated from Facebook/Meta in March 2017 with no official explanation. Internal emails obtained by WSJ showed executives including Zuckerberg pressured Luckey to publicly claim he supported Gary Johnson rather than Trump. Luckey hired an employment lawyer and negotiated a $100M+ payout citing California employment law violations. In 2024, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth publicly apologized for his ousting.

In February 2017, a jury found Palmer Luckey personally liable for $50 million in damages in ZeniMax Media's lawsuit against Oculus VR. The total verdict was $500 million against Oculus, Facebook, Luckey, and others. While the jury cleared Luckey of trade secret misappropriation and theft, they found him liable for copyright infringement related to the marketing of the Oculus Rift, specifically for violating an NDA he had signed with ZeniMax subsidiary id Software.

Palmer Luckey donated $100,000 to Donald Trump's 2017 Presidential Inaugural Committee through a shell company called Wings of Time LLC, while still employed at Facebook. The donation was received on January 4, 2017, and was reported by Mother Jones. Luckey used the shell company rather than donating in his own name.

In September 2016, The Daily Beast reported that Palmer Luckey had secretly funded Nimble America, a pro-Trump political group that created and spread memes and shitposts supporting Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The revelation caused significant backlash in the VR community, with some developers refusing to support Oculus. Luckey initially denied involvement, then acknowledged funding the group. He left Meta/Facebook in March 2017.

In 2012, at age 19, Palmer Luckey designed the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and launched a Kickstarter campaign that raised $2.4 million, or 974% of its original target. The Oculus Rift is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality industry after decades of dormancy. Mark Zuckerberg called it 'one of the coolest things I've ever seen' and Facebook acquired the company for $2 billion in 2014. Luckey's innovation democratized VR technology and made it accessible to consumers.