Mark Zuckerberg and his former employee Palmer Luckey join hands to make gadgets for military
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is partnering with his former employee Palmer Luckey to make combat VR headsets for the military. This is interesting for more reasons than one. Of course, it is notable that Meta is using its AI tech to power wearables for military equipment. 'Meta has spent the last decade building AI and AR to enable the computing platform of the future,' said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta. 'We're proud to partner with Anduril to help bring these technologies to the American service members that protect our interests at home and abroad.'advertisement'Anduril and Meta are partnering to design, build, and field a range of integrated XR products that provide warfighters with enhanced perception and enable intuitive control of autonomous platforms on the battlefield,' Anduril writes in an announcement post.
However, here is what is more interesting: Zuckerberg and Luckey's history. They had a somewhat messy breakup back in 2016. Palmer Luckey, who is the founder of Oculus VR and the designer of Oculus Rift, was fired from Meta nine years ago for donating $10,000 to a pro-Donald Trump group that had run a billboard criticising Hillary Clinton. 'I am glad to be working with Meta once again.' said Palmer Luckey, Founder of Anduril. 'Of all the areas where dual-use technology can make a difference for America, this is the one I am most excited about. My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that.'advertisement
Luckey's Anduril Industries and Meta will be making rugged helmets, glasses and other wearables for the US military. These wearables will provide a virtual-reality or augmented-reality experience. Anduril and Meta's project together is reportedly being called EagleEye, which will eventually form a full ecosystem of hardware devices, according to TechCrunch. Interestingly, EagleEye was originally the name of a headset concept Palmer Luckey had included in Anduril's early pitch deck. At the time, investors urged him to shift focus away from hardware and concentrate on building software first.
'All of them had worked with me for years via Oculus VR, and when they saw the EagleEye headset in our first Anduril pitch deck draft, they pointed out that it seemed like I was sequencing things irrationally,' Luckey explained in a post on X earlier this year. 'They believed, correctly, that I was too focused on winning a pissing contest over the future of AR/VR, on proving that I was right and the people who fired me were wrong.'Following the announcement of the Meta-Anduril partnership on Thursday, Luckey reflected on the collaboration with another post on X: 'It is pretty cool to have everything at our fingertips for this joint effort – everything I made before Meta acquired Oculus, everything we made together, and everything we did on our own after I was fired.'advertisementA year after Luckey was fired from Meta, he co-founded Anduril Industries in 2017. The company specialises in American defense technology. It specifically makes autonomous systems for the military.Zuckerberg has lately been trying to build a closer relationship with Donald Trump. He has reportedly also been leaning on Trump for favours. Reportedly, just ahead of the ongoing Meta vs FTC trial kicked off, Zuckerberg had requested Trump to step in and help block the monopoly lawsuit. Meta also contributed $1 million to Trump's inauguration and also resolved Trump's $25 million lawsuit.
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