PALMER LUCKEY
Founder
Anduril Industries
Irvine
Grew up in Long Beach
Age: 27
Lives in Newport Beach
WHY: Virtual reality visionary runs OC’s most closely watched startup. Anduril uses artificial intelligence and VR to monitor large areas and, in the company’s words, “allow warfighters, first responders and law enforcement to act quickly with the best information available.”
HOW: Oculus—a maker of virtual reality hardware and software products—was founded by Luckey in 2012. Eighteen months later, Facebook swooped in and bought it for $3 billion. It’s one of the fastest multibillion-dollar exit transactions on record, and vaulted Luckey’s wealth to a figure the Business Journal estimates at around $800 million. Left Facebook in 2017, returned to OC and started Anduril.
RECENT: $41 million investment from Founders Fund, a venture capital firm headed by billionaire Peter Thiel. Reported contracts with Department of Homeland Security to monitor US-Mexico border, and possibly Department of Defense for work in Afghanistan.
FAST FACT: Owns a marina in Huntington Beach.
QUOTABLE: The company’s product works, he told the Washington Post. “We’re not a concept, we’re not a white paper, we’re a real system that’s actually deployed in multiple sites on the U.S. border.”
PERSONAL: Home schooled. As a teenager, Luckey took apart smartphones and fixed them for cash. Enrolled in California State University-Long Beach—his planned major was journalism—but eventually dropped out. Says OC is “one of the best entrepreneurial environments in the entire world.”
