Build the products, then sell them.

Luckey founded Oculus in 2012 at age 19 after building Rift prototypes in his garage in Long Beach. Kickstarter raised $2.4M (originally seeking $250K). Facebook acquired Oculus for ~$2B in 2014. Luckey stayed at Facebook until 2017 when he was publicly dismissed amid controversy over his political donations. The exit became a public episode about Silicon Valley culture + speech, and is the inflection point for the rest of his arc.

Founded Anduril Industries in June 2017 with Trae Stephens (Founders Fund), Brian Schimpf, Joe Chen, Matt Grimm. The founding thesis: US defense industrial base lost ability to ship competitive products at competitive prices because cost-plus contract model rewards delivery delays + technology stagnation. Anduril positioned to invert it — build products, sell finished hardware to DoD at fixed price, refresh on consumer-tech cycles.

Anduril's first product was the Sentry Tower — autonomous surveillance towers for border + base perimeter. Customs and Border Protection became an early customer. Lattice OS (the AI-driven C2 platform) emerged as the software spine. Through 2020 Anduril was the underdog defense-tech story; through 2021 it became inevitable.

Series E (2022) $1.48B at $8.5B valuation. Series F (2024) $1.5B+ at $14B+ valuation. Named in DoD Replicator initiative (2023, ~thousands of attritable autonomous systems within 18-24 months) for ALTIUS + Bolt. Co-won the US Air Force Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program with General Atomics in 2024 — most consequential single contract win for the company.

Luckey speaks publicly about West-vs-authoritarian frames. After the Facebook departure he became one of the most visible Silicon Valley figures explicitly aligned with defense work. He defends his political positions on extended podcasts (Lex Fridman, The Free Press, Joe Rogan) without softening them for the audience. The cultural-stance is itself part of Anduril's hiring filter — the company attracts engineers who agree with it and would not work there otherwise.

Anduril increasingly builds the manufacturing too — purchased an Ohio manufacturing facility in 2024, opened additional production lines for the drone + maritime + ground vehicle product families. The vertical-integration argument: software-only defense competitors (Palantir) and hardware-only competitors (traditional primes) are each missing half the puzzle; Anduril controls both ends. This is the bet the next decade will validate or refute.