Meta and Anduril Partner on Military Mixed Reality Headsets, Marking a Win for Palmer Luckey

In a significant development for the extended reality (XR) landscape, Anduril and Meta have announced a collaboration to develop XR devices for the U.S. military. This partnership marks a notable moment for Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, who expressed his enthusiasm in a blog post by Anduril: “I am glad to be working with Meta once again. My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that.” [1]

This collaboration is rooted in the Soldier Borne Mission Command (SBMC) Next program, formerly known as the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) Next. The IVAS program, initially a $22 billion contract awarded to Microsoft in 2018, aimed to create HoloLens-like AR glasses for soldiers. However, after facing numerous challenges, the Army reassigned management of the program to Anduril in February, with Microsoft remaining as a cloud provider. The long-term objective is to diversify the suppliers of mixed reality glasses for military personnel. [2]

For Meta, this partnership provides an entry point into the potentially lucrative market of military VR/AR/XR headsets, leveraging Anduril’s existing involvement in the SBMC Next program. The devices will incorporate technology from Meta’s Reality Labs, utilize Meta’s Llama AI model, and integrate with Anduril’s Lattice command and control software. The goal is to deliver real-time battlefield intelligence to soldiers through a heads-up display.

The collaboration also signifies a form of reconciliation for Palmer Luckey, who was famously dismissed from Facebook in 2017, three years after Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus. His departure followed controversy surrounding his support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Luckey subsequently founded Anduril in 2017 alongside Brian Schimpf, Trae Stephens, and Matt Grimm.

An Anduril spokesperson revealed that the product family being developed by Meta and Anduril is named EagleEye, envisioned as an ecosystem of devices. Notably, EagleEye was the original name Luckey had proposed for Anduril’s initial headset concept, before investors advised him to prioritize software development.

Following the announcement, Luckey shared his thoughts on X, stating: “It is pretty cool to have everything at our fingertips for this joint effort – everything I made before Meta acquired Oculus, everything we made together, and everything we did on our own after I was fired.” [3]

Further demonstrating the renewed relationship, Anduril has launched a Facebook page. [4]