With Insider contributions three weeks running, and a recent cameo as a Chapman University guest lecturer, Editor at Large Rick Reiff is clearly retired in name only. The Original Insider’s latest report notes the continued good fortune of OC’s best-known tech exec under the age of 30—or perhaps OC’s most nationally known tech exec, period:
The timing couldn’t have been better.
Wearing his usual Hawaiian shirt and shorts, OC tech entrepreneur Palmer Luckey sat down last month with CNBC reporter Josh Lipton for a live interview from his Irvine-based AI startup Anduril Industries—at the very moment major stock indexes were hitting all-time highs.
For 13 minutes, while flashing numbers at the bottom of the screen tracked the market action, Luckey laid out for potential investors and other viewers Anduril’s game plan for becoming a defense industry disruptor.
Traditional defense contractors “are good at building aircraft carriers, they’re good at building fighter interceptors, but they do not have the world’s best talent when it comes to artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, those types of things,” he said.
Anduril’s sole focus on the Department of Defense also gives it an advantage over tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon, who must worry about public perception when dealing with “the kill chain,” Luckey said. “If it reduces their consumer enterprise sales by 1% or increases controversy by 1% it will likely not be worth doing.”
Besides, he said, Anduril expects to work with Microsoft.
Asked about his public support for President Donald Trump, a rarity among tech execs, Luckey said, “Politics make up a tiny fraction of a percent of what I spend my time doing.”
“I think we’re going to do well under a Republican president, I think we’d do well under a Democrat president, I think we would do well under a Libertarian president.”
Luckey’s political donations have largely trended toward right-leaning candidates, but he’s thrown a few curve balls.
Last month, came news reports that he made a pair of (attempted) donations to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s reelection campaign in New York; her campaign said they returned Luckey’s money.
AbbVie’s impending $63B acquisition of Allergan, expected to close early next year, no doubt will have a big impact on the Irvine operations of the acquired company.
Even with change in the air, execs of Allergan—past and present—plan to put on a happy face locally Jan. 10, with OCTANe’s inaugural Aesthetics Technology Summit, being held at Newport Beach’s Balboa Bay Resort.
“The idea is for this to become a national event similar to our ophthalmology conference in June,” said OCTANe’s Bill Carpou, noting that Allergan is a key sponsor of the event.
Speakers will include Brent Saunders, Allergan’s chairman, CEO and president; Carrie Strom, Allergan’s Irvine-based SVP of medical aesthetics; David Moatazedi, ex-Allergan head of aesthetics and current CEO and president of Newport Beach’s Evolus, as well as Fauad Hasan, former CEO of Newport Beach’s Bonti, which last year was acquired by Allergan for $195 million.
