Palmer Luckey

Founded Oculus VR in 2012, sold to Facebook in 2014, then started defence-tech company Anduril Industries in 2017 with veterans of US Special Operations Command and Palantir. Anduril builds the Lattice software platform — a sensor-and-drone fusion layer running on the Pentagon’s tactical edge — together with hardware including the Sentry surveillance tower, the ALTIUS-600M loitering munition, and the Bolt and Roadrunner counter-drone systems. Public face of a generation of defence-tech founders pitching the Pentagon to buy software like a tech company rather than a defence prime.

Anduril is the single most-cited example of the new defence-tech model — software-first, fast-moving, willing to self-fund hardware — and Luckey is the most-quoted founder of that wave.