Another Trump-y tech bro is weaseling his way into the federal government. According to a report from Axios, Anduril Industries and its CEO Palmer Luckey intend to take over Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar contract to build Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), an augmented reality headset for use by the US Army.
The deal still needs to be approved by the government, but that hasn’t stopped Luckey from taking a victory lap. The billionaire founder of Oculus VR took to X to declare in no uncertain terms that “Anduril is taking over IVAS, and we don’t have time for business as usual.”
Anduril is taking over IVAS, and we don’t have time for business as usual.
Whatever you are imagining, however crazy you imagine I am, multiply it by ten and then do it again. I am back, and I am only getting started. https://t.co/t2ayvBHtuA pic.twitter.com/XZX2f6r2AN
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) February 11, 2025
Sure sounds like the words of a guy who knows he’s got an inside track with the current administration. Luckey has indirectly been lining Trump’s pockets as far back as 2016 when he donated to a non-profit org that supported the then-candidate for president. He hedged his bets back then, publicly supporting Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, but he’s gotten much more open about his Trumpian tendencies in recent years. He hosted a fundraiser for Trump in 2020, and as more tech CEOs like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen made their rightward shift and came around to the Trump campaign in 2024, Luckey lamented that it took them so long to see what he saw.
Anduril’s likely takeover of the IVAS marks a major win for the defense contractor, and what will likely be the first of many opportunities for Trump-friendly tech execs to cash in. With IVAS, Luckey and the company will be tasked with developing a mixed-reality headset designed to offer a high-tech overlay of important information that will better equip infantry and pilots for their missions.
The contract was originally handled by Microsoft, who scored the deal back in 2018 and started building a HoloLens-style headset for military use. While development has yielded a prototype version of IVAS that received some testing, the whole thing has kinda been a disaster. An Inspector General report from 2022 accused the Department of Defense of wasting money on the project because the agency never considered if soldiers actually wanted to wear the damn things. A demo version of Microsoft’s IVAS failed in four out of six trials, with one participant concluding “The devices would have gotten us killed.”
Microsoft abandoned the HoloLens as a whole last year, with no clear plans for reviving the project. So it only makes sense that it’d surrender its version designed for military use that has turned into a money pit. As it turns out, that’s a pit that Luckey is happy to dive into.
On X, Luckey teased that he has big plans for the contract, stating, “Whatever you are imagining, however crazy you imagine I am, multiply it by ten and then do it again.”
But, per Axios, his plans don’t sound all that wild. The publication quotes him as saying he sees his company producing everything from “glasses that look a lot like the Oakleys you wear every day all the way up to things that look like an Iron Man helmet.” Which like, yeah, that is the range of things that people would wear on their head, man. That seems exactly in line with what people would be imagining.