Palmer Luckey
Palmer Freeman Luckey is an American entrepreneur best known as the founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset that is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality industry.
In 2017, Luckey was fired from Facebook and founded military contractor Anduril Industries, a military technology company focused on autonomous drones and sensors for military applications. Luckey ranked number 22 on Forbes 2016 List of America's Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40. As of November 2025, Forbes valued his net worth at $3.5 billion.
Early life and education
Luckey was born and raised in Long Beach, California, with three younger sisters. His father worked at a car dealership.As a child he was homeschooled by his mother, took sailing lessons, and developed an intense interest in electronics and engineering. He took courses at Golden West College and Long Beach City College beginning at the age of 14 or 15, and then at California State University, Long Beach in 2010. He later majored in journalism at CSU Long Beach, where he also wrote and was Online Editor for the university's student-run newspaper, the Daily 49er.
During his childhood and teenage years, Luckey experimented with a variety of complex electrical projects including railguns, Tesla coils, and lasers, with some of these projects resulting in serious injuries. He built a PC gaming "rig" worth tens of thousands of U.S. dollars with an elaborate six-monitor setup.
In 2009, he founded the ModRetro Forums with a friend, creating an online community for "portabilization", a hobby that revolves around turning old hardware devices such as game consoles and PCs into self-contained portable units mixing new and old technology.
While attending college, he also worked part-time as an engineer in the Mixed Reality Lab of the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California designing cost-effective virtual reality systems for BRAVEMIND, a U.S. Army Research Laboratory effort to treat veterans suffering from PTSD.
Career
Oculus VR
In 2009, when he was 16, he began building virtual reality headsets of his own design. Existing head-mounted displays in the market suffered from low contrast and field-of-view, high latency and cost, and extreme bulk and weight. He completed his first prototype, called PR1, at age 17 in his parents' garage, which featured a 90-degree field of view, low latency, and built-in haptic feedback. Ultimately, he built more than 50 head-mounted displays. To fund these projects, he earned at least US$36,000 by fixing and reselling damaged iPhones and working part-time as a groundskeeper, youth sailing coach, and computer repair technician.Luckey developed a series of prototypes exploring features like 3D stereoscopy, wireless, and extreme 270-degree field-of-view, while also decreasing the size and weight of his systems. He shared regular updates on his progress on MTBS3D, an online forum frequented by virtual reality enthusiasts. He called his 6th-generation unit the "Oculus Rift", which was intended to be sold as a do-it-yourself kit on Kickstarter to fellow enthusiasts. He launched Oculus VR in April 2012 to facilitate the official launch of the Kickstarter campaign.
John Carmack of id Software requested a prototype headset from Luckey, who lent it to Carmack free of charge. Carmack used it to demonstrate id Software's Doom 3: BFG Edition on the device at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012. With the resulting attention of thousands of people suddenly drawn to the Rift, Luckey dropped out of university to focus on it full-time.
Luckey also demonstrated the unit to Valve, and received a Kickstarter endorsement from Valve's managing director Gabe Newell, who said, "It looks incredibly exciting. If anybody is going to tackle this set of hard problems, we think that Palmer is going to do it. We strongly encourage you to support this Kickstarter." When Luckey launched his Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift, it also contained recorded endorsements from other prominent figures in the game industry, including Cliff Bleszinski, David Helgason, and Michael Abrash.
During the Kickstarter campaign, Luckey demonstrated the Rift to gamers and the press at many gaming conventions, including PAX, Gamescom, and QuakeCon 2012. The Kickstarter campaign was successful, raising US$2.4 million, or 974% of its original target. After raising more than $1 million, Luckey hired Brendan Iribe in August 2012 to be CEO of Oculus. Oculus VR expanded, taking on more employees and a larger office space. Luckey described his day-to-day process as not having "changed all that much," remaining a "slow plod towards making this thing a reality." Luckey continued to work on all aspects of the business, saying, "I have my hands in everything, from product engineering to game development to marketing," Later, he shifted his focus towards virtual reality input hardware, calling it a "pet project" that eventually culminated in the Oculus Touch spatial controller.
ZeniMax lawsuit
Shortly after the Facebook acquisition, ZeniMax Media filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The lawsuit contended that Luckey and Oculus used ZeniMax's "trade secrets, copyrighted computer code, and technical know-how relating to virtual reality technology", and sought financial damages for breach of contract, copyright infringement, and unfair competition. ZeniMax claimed it had invested "tens of millions of dollars in research and development" into VR technology, and that "Oculus and Luckey lacked the necessary expertise and technical know-how to create a viable virtual reality headset".The jury trial completed on February 2, 2017. The jury found that Luckey had violated a non-disclosure agreement he had with ZeniMax, but awarded zero damages on this charge, judging the harm as de minimis. Though the jury found that Oculus, Facebook, Palmer Luckey, Brendan Iribe, and John Carmack did not misappropriate or steal trade secrets and technology, they awarded a combined total of $500 million in damages for copyright infringement related to the marketing of the Oculus Rift, with Luckey responsible for $50 million of the total.
In June 2018, the judge overseeing the case affirmed the jury’s award of $200 million for breach of contract and $50 million for copyright infringement, but dismissed the remaining $250 million owed by Luckey and other parties.
Firing and political controversy
In September 2016, it was reported that Luckey had donated $10,000 to Nimble America, a pro-Donald Trump group that ran a billboard depicting 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton with the caption "Too Big to Jail". This caused a small number of developers to temporarily cancel plans to support Oculus, including Scruta Games, which announced it would cancel Oculus's support in their games unless Luckey stepped down. Tomorrow Today Labs said they would not support the Oculus Touch as long as Luckey is employed by Oculus. Tomorrow Today Labs later reversed this position after Oculus began distancing themselves from Luckey and refocused on diversity and inclusion.In March 2017, Palmer Luckey left Facebook, and stopped his involvement with Oculus VR. No explanation for the departure was given by either party. As part of testimony before the United States Senate in April 2018, Senator Ted Cruz asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, "Why was Palmer Luckey fired?" Zuckerberg refused to get into the "specific personnel matter", saying only that "it was not because of a political view".
In November 2018, The Wall Street Journal obtained access to internal Facebook emails which suggested the matter was discussed at the highest levels of the company. Facebook executives, including Zuckerberg, reportedly pressured Luckey to publicly voice support for libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, despite his support for then Republican nominee Donald Trump. After his firing, Luckey hired an employment lawyer, and together negotiated a payout of at least $100 million, arguing that the company had violated California law for allegedly pressuring the executive to voice support for Johnson and for punishing an employee for political activity.
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, who moved from the Ads team to leading the Oculus division four months after Luckey's departure, issued a series of tweets in November 2018 denying wrongdoing on the part of Facebook, saying "Politics had nothing to do with Palmer's departure." Facebook likewise denied Luckey had been fired for supporting Trump, stating "We can say unequivocally that Palmer's departure was not due to his political views." In an interview with 60 Minutes in May of 2025, Luckey stated that, "Well, you know, everyone's got a different story, but it boils down to I gave $9,000 to a political group that was for Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton."
Anduril Industries
In June 2017, Luckey founded the autonomy-focused military technology company Anduril Industries, along with former Palantir Technologies executives Matt Grimm, Trae Stephens, and Brian Schimpf, and early Oculus VR Hardware Lead Joseph Chen. In March 2018, Anduril began a pilot program for the US government to detect human trafficking and drug smuggling in remote areas of the southern border of the US; the program led to 55 attempted entrants being caught in its first 12 days in operation. Anduril later won the Autonomous Surveillance Tower Program of Record, resulting in the deployment of hundreds of Anduril Sentry Towers at a cost of "hundreds of millions of dollars".In September 2020, Luckey announced through Twitter that Anduril had received a contract worth $967M for the Advanced Battle Management Systems, a cutting-edge multi-billion dollar project by the U.S. Air Force.
In February 2022, Luckey announced that Anduril had won a $1 billion contract to lead counter-unmanned systems work for United States Special Operations Command.
On December 26, 2025, Luckey was sanctioned by China for what it said was his role in selling arms to Taiwan. The Wall Street Journal said the sanctions were symbolic as "U.S. defense contractors generally do little business in China."