- Palmer Luckey told MIT Technology Review he’s still “sore” about being ousted from Facebook in 2017.
- But the billionaire VR guru said he doesn’t blame Mark Zuckerberg or the modern iteration of Meta.
- Luckey, who founded Oculus VR, has since turned his efforts to Anduril, a defense tech company.
Palmer Luckey is still angry about his ousting from Facebook eight years ago — but the billionaire virtual reality guru doesn’t blame Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Luckey, 32, told the MIT Technology Review this month that he isn’t angry with the social media company’s top executive over the events that resulted in Luckey leaving the company three years after he sold Oculus VR to Facebook for $2 billion,
“I have a lot more anger for the people who lied in a way that ruined my entire life and that saw my own company ripped out from under me that I’d spent my entire adult life building,” he told the outlet.
“I’ve got plenty of anger left, but it’s not at Meta, the corporate entity,” Luckey added. “It’s not at Zuck.”
A representative for Meta did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Luckey, who went on to create Anduril, a defense tech company that has won several government contracts, left Meta in 2017 after his $10,000 political contribution to a pro-Trump group became public. At the time, Meta — then Facebook — denied that Luckey’s departure was related to politics.
Luckey remains a supporter of former President Donald Trump and co-hosted fundraisers for him in both 2020 and 2024.
Much of his remaining ire, Luckey told the outlet, is reserved for less well-known people involved in the situation, such as public relations agents, reporters, and lawyers.
Luckey noted that he is still mad about the steps Facebook took to try to keep him from sharing his version of events at the time, saying he wrote some statements but never published them because of threats from the company.
“Anyway,” Luckey told MIT. “I’m still sore about it eight years later.”
In an August profile written by Tablet magazine, Luckey described himself as a “crusader for vengeance” with regard to his ouster.
“Right now, I gain nothing by correcting the record of things that [Facebook] did wrong eight years ago,” he told the outlet. “If it’s better for me to bury it, I will.”
At the same time, Luckey said he doesn’t want to throw Zuckerberg under the bus because he wants Meta to keep investing in VR.
The company has lost tens of billions of dollars on its Reality Labs division, which is responsible for augmented reality, though Zuckerberg has said VR investment is a “long-term bet,” BI previously reported, citing earnings.
Meanwhile, Zuck told Tablet that he had a “huge amount of respect” for Palmer and said he hoped the two could work together again in the future.
Luckey’s nearly decade-old resentments continued to thaw in recent weeks.
At a Pepperdine University interview earlier this month, Luckey said he had recently visited Meta’s headquarters for the first time since he left the company to demo the new Orion glasses.
He also accepted an apology from Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth over a previous social media argument the two had about his ouster.
“I am infamously good at holding grudges, but Meta has changed a lot over the past 8 years,” Luckey wrote on X earlier this month. “The people responsible for my ouster and internal/external smear campaign aren’t even around anymore.”
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