Oculus founder Palmer Luckey's border surveillance company gets $1 billion valuation

[midian182]

In brief: Palmer Luckey, the founder of virtual reality platform Oculus VR, appears to be doing well in his latest venture: building virtual walls for monitoring border crossings. His company, Anduril Industries, is reportedly being valued at $1 billion in a new fundraising round.

Luckey struck it big in 2014 after Facebook paid $2 billion for Oculus VR. But things turned sour in March 2017 when, after admitting that he helped fund a pro-Trump organization called Nimble America responsible for spreading anti-Clinton memes on the Internet, he was fired from the social network.

A few months later, news surfaced that Luckey was back with a new company. Anduril uses the same lidar tech found in self-driving cars, along with cameras and infrared sensors, combined with AI to track movement around perimeters of military bases and stadiums. It also monitors for any illegal activity around borders.

According to CNBC, a new fundraising round has seen Anduril valued at $1 billion. One of the biggest contributors is venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, according to the publication’s anonymous sources.

Many Silicon Valley firms have found taking military contracts to be more trouble than they’re worth. Google’s Project Maven, a pentagon contract that involved using AI to trawl through drone footage, resulted in an open letter of protest signed by 3,100 employees sent to CEO Sundar Pichai. Microsoft boss Satya Nadella, meanwhile, also received an open letter from employees, this one protesting the company’s work with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and its HoloLens contract with the US army hasn’t been welcomed by workers, either.

Luckey is a firm believer that tech firms should be free to work for the military without interference, as displayed by Anduril’s description of itself: a company that “invents and builds technology to secure America and its interests.”

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/81861-oculus-founder-palmer-luckey-border-surveillance-company-gets.html

 

[VitalyT]

No mo political memes, Mr. Luckey, alright?

Also, the guy who cheated elections to let Trump win, and now openly profits from the military must be a class 1 scumbag, like this one (probably his role-model):

 

[loki1944]

Awesome, great to see a successful patriot .

 

[Bluescreendeath]

No mo political memes, Mr. Luckey, alright?
Also, the guy who cheated elections to let Trump win, and now openly profits from the military must be a class 1 scumbag, like this one (probably his role-model):

First, you consider posting political memes to be cheating elections? You are exaggerating what he did and putting it on the level of what Russia did. It cheapens what Russia did...cheating elections by actually hacking into political party databases, attempting to hack and compromise voting machines, spreading false information disguised as news (not memes), etc.

Second, it's ignorant to sh1t on any company that does business with the military. The US military/DOD is the second largest federal government sector by funding in the US behind the Department of Health and Human services and is the largest employer in the US. Hundreds of thousands of companies do business directly or indirectly with the military. For example, Kellogs, the huge company famous for making cereal, has a very long and profitable relationship with the US military. Most of the big name technology and manufacturing companies have some sort of relationship. The largest professional services companies in the world in legal, accounting, IT, etc services also have contracts with the military. Even McDonalds and Starbucks has/had contracts with the military.

Even DISNEY, you know, the company known for Mickey Mouse and now the Avengers, has contracts with the military involving filming coordination.

There's a very good chance a company or organization you've worked for in the past or were associated with had at least some funding that came through the DOD.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

A country has a right to protect its borders to prevent un-vetted people from coming in. There is a legal method to enter the country and even become a citizen if you want. Until there is a world government, each country has its own laws and rules and has every right to protect them.