Mark Zuckerberg and Palmer Luckey end their beef and partner to build extended reality tech for the US military
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey — once on warring sides of the tech culture clash — are giving new meaning to the adage: all is fair in love and war.
The two executives buried the hatchet and announced a partnership Thursday to build next-gen extended reality gear for the US military. The system, dubbed Eagle Eye, will use AI and sensors in new headsets and other wearables to enhance vision, letting troops spot far-away threats with augmented reality, Luckey said on a podcast.
Anduril's Lattice, its AI command-and-control platform, will provide real-time battlefield intel. The partnership will also use tech from Meta's Reality Labs and Llama AI models.
The companies said they're building the tech with "private capital, without taxpayer support," promising to save the US military "billions of dollars," Anduril said in a statement. They will also be using tech "originally built for commercial use." Anduril raised $1.5 billion in August 2024 and is reportedly raising as much as $2.5 billion more, Reuters reported in February.
The announcement also comes amid a flush of venture cash and Big Tech interest rushing toward defense tech. In 2024, VC investments in defense-related companies hit $31 billion, up 33% year-over-year. Meta's peers have also renewed interest in the space. In February, Google updated its ethical guidelines for AI, removing previous pledges not to use its tech for weapons or surveillance tools, a vow made after thousands of employees protested the company's involvement in the DoD collaboration Project Maven in 2018.
Big Tech companies are also cozying up to the Trump administration — a move that was once the source of Zuckerberg and Luckey's beef.
Luckey, who sold his VR startup to Facebook in 2014, was ousted from Facebook in 2016 after donating $10,000 to a pro-Trump meme group. (Facebook and Zuckerberg have denied that Luckey departed due to his politics.) The Wall Street Journal reported in 2018 that Zuckerberg and other Facebook execs pressured Luckey to publicly back libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson instead. Luckey founded Anduril in 2017.
Almost a decade later, Luckey and Zuckerberg appear to be letting bygones be bygones. The duo even hinted at working together late last year after Luckey visited Meta's headquarters to demo the company's Orion glasses and posted a picture in them on X.
pic.twitter.com/Bk747nc9MV
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) September 30, 2024
"I am infamously good at holding grudges, but Meta has changed a lot over the past years," Luckey wrote on X in October 2024. "The people responsible for my ouster and internal/external smear campaign aren't even around anymore. At some point, the Ship of Theseus has sailed."
"I have a huge amount of respect for Palmer — both for what he's done for VR and for now achieving the rare feat of building multiple successful companies," Zuckerberg told Tablet Magazine last fall. "I was sad when his time at Meta came to an end, but the silver lining is that his work at Anduril is going to be extremely important for our national security."
"This is cool to see," Elon Musk chimed in response to Luckey's X post. "Mensch to mensch."
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