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- Ex-Facebook and Oculus exec Palmer Luckey is reportedly hosting a fundraiser event for President Donald Trump at his Southern California home on Sunday.
- The report comes as the Trump campaign attempts to raise money as funds continue to run dry.
- Luckey is a high-profile figure in the tech world, having founded the VR startup Oculus before selling it to Facebook in 2014.
- He left Oculus in 2017, shortly after reports emerged that he backed a pro-Trump group during the 2016 presidential election. Mark Zuckerberg testified in 2018 that Luckey’s firing “was not because of a political view.”
- Luckey has since founded Anduril, a military-contracting startup that was recently awarded a contract to build a “virtual” border wall for the Trump administration.
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Ex-Facebook and Oculus exec Palmer Luckey will reportedly host a fundraiser for President Donald Trump this weekend as he vies for reelection in early November.
Luckey will host the fundraiser at his and his wife’s home in Southern California on Sunday. Tickets for the event range from $2,800 to $100,000 a person. CNBC first reported the event.
A spokesperson for Anduril did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
The report comes as President Trump attempts to raise funds for the home stretch of his reelection campaign. As Business Insider’s Tom LoBianco reported Tuesday, the Trump campaign is currently low on cash following its ousting of ex-manager Brad Pascale, who was found to have made high-priced expenses including hiring a personal driver and traveling aboard Air Force One.
“They don’t have enough money to close out the race,” a former GOP fundraiser told LoBianco.
As for Luckey, the conservative-minded exec is an anomaly in the tech world, which is largely considered left-leaning.
Luckey founded the VR startup Oculus in 2012 before he sold the firm to Facebook for $3 billion two years later. In 2017, he left his post leading Facebook's VR operations, soon after it was reported that he was pouring thousands into a pro-Trump group that created anti-Hillary Clinton memes during the 2016 presidential election. During a Senate hearing in 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified that Luckey's departure "wasn't because of a political view."
His exit also came three years after a lawsuit was filed by gaming company ZeniMax that alleged Oculus swiped its code to build its uber-popular Rift VR headset.
Luckey in 2017 also founded Anduril, a military-contracting startup with a recent valuation of nearly $2 billion. The startup was awarded a contract with US Customs and Border Protection in June that amounted to a reported several hundred million dollars to build a virtual "wall" as a means to monitor crossings into the US.
