Palmer Luckey
Oculus VR founder who co-founded Anduril in 2017 and is its most public voice. He is not the CEO.
Palmer Luckey (born 1992, Long Beach, California) built the prototype for the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset as a teenager and founded Oculus VR in 2012. Facebook bought Oculus in 2014 for about $2 billion. Luckey left Facebook in 2017.
Later in 2017 he co-founded Anduril with Trae Stephens, Brian Schimpf, Matt Grimm and Joe Chen. He is the company's best-known spokesman: he appears in interviews, at conferences and on podcasts arguing that the U.S. needs a new generation of defense companies that build autonomous weapons quickly and cheaply. Brian Schimpf is the CEO.
Luckey has also founded ModRetro, a retro-gaming hardware company. In September 2026 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named him, Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich to lead a Pentagon study called Project Meridian, which drew conflict-of-interest questions because Anduril sells to the Pentagon.
Questions
Is Palmer Luckey the CEO of Anduril?
No. Palmer Luckey is a co-founder of Anduril. The CEO is Brian Schimpf, also a co-founder.
What did Palmer Luckey do before Anduril?
He founded Oculus VR, maker of the Oculus Rift headset, which Facebook acquired in 2014 for about $2 billion. He left Facebook in 2017 and co-founded Anduril the same year.
What is Project Meridian?
A Pentagon study announced in September 2026 that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Palmer Luckey, Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich would help lead, looking at the future of warfare.
