Palmer Luckey just wants to survive.
The Anduril founder said he told his investors that there’s only one thing that could ever distract him from running his nearly $31 billion defense tech startup: the hit reality show “Survivor.”
“If I ever get on ‘Survivor,’ I’m going to go on it. I’m going to disappear for six weeks to a beautiful island in Fiji and compete in a variety of intellectual and physical challenges,” he told Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press who was just hired to be the new editor in chief of CBS News.
His investors, he added, “can’t say anything.” Luckey said he told them that if he were ever on the show, they couldn’t fire him, lord it over him, or make funny jokes about it.
He said he requested that flexibility eight years ago. He still hasn’t had a chance to get on the show, but he said he applies every year.
The 33-year-old founded the virtual reality company Oculus VR in 2012 and sold it to Meta 2 years later for $2 billion. He founded Anduril Industries in 2017, which has since won several government contracts to develop autonomous weapons. In March, it scored a 10-year, $642 million contract with the US Marine Corps for anti-drone defenses geared toward fighting smaller drones.
All this success, however, might prove troublesome for Luckey if he ever managed to land a spot on “Survivor.”
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“I don’t think I can win because I’m too rich,” he told Weiss. That’s because no matter how low he kept his profile, his identity would almost certainly be revealed by someone, at some point, he said.
“What jury, in their right mind, is going to vote for a billionaire to get a million dollars,” he said, referring to the group that casts a vote to determine the show’s ultimate winner every season.
Luckey said the other contestants are likely to seem more deserving of the prize money than him.
