Palmer Luckey appears at conference as VR-controlled robot

The American hype train is real, according to Anduril founder and billionaire Palmer Luckey.

Appearing at the Reindustrialize Summit, Luckey seemingly proved the power of positivity makes nearly anything possible, and not in a cringey, motivational speaker sort of way, either. Rather, it is in the create robots, video games, and military warfighter technology kind of way.

In fact, Luckey found a way to corroborate his belief at the summit and showed it off in such a manner that was far more interesting than the movie “Real Steel.”

‘Hype is what allows you to get investment in these problems.’

With a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and an unsightly wig, Luckey delivered a 20-minute speech on the conference stage by remotely controlling a robot using virtual reality.

While the bot seemed a bit primitive by today’s expectations, basic movements were controlled by the billionaire from afar using just VR goggles.

“I finally pulled off my long-standing goal of speaking at a conference via VR telerobotics!” Luckey wrote on X. “Thousands of miles of travel saved, and no chance of Luigi.”

While the robot’s ability to shake a hand was suspect, Luckey’s message was not as static. The entrepreneur emphasized his goal of making a “Star Trek” future and said a lot of the ability to make that happen comes from “hype.”

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A lot of hype is “bad if you really let it break your thinking,” Luckey told author Ashlee Vance on stage.

While the billionaire explained that over-hyping a project and forgetting prime directives can result in “really playing yourself,” he clarified, “hype is what allows you to get investment in these problems.”

“Investors don’t want to hear, ‘It’s going to be a 20-year slog, and it’s probably not going to work out for us, it’s probably our other companies that are going to win,'” Luckey continued.

To that end, the Anduril boss said the “enormous power” of optimism can help drive innovation forward and produce real results. The example he provided was exactly the technology Luckey was showing off.

“I think the hype around virtual reality and augmented reality in the early 20-teens led to tens of billions of dollars in research and development. It would not have happened if people had been … a little less on the hype train.”

Luckey has indeed ventured into AR military equipment with this mindset and recently revealed his first project would be a military helmet called Eagle Eye, which gives Army soldiers access to advanced augmented reality systems that make them “superhuman.”

Luckey added at the conference, that while some will downplay the hype, he finds it hard to “get too upset” about hype happening “in a space like American manufacturing.”

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– YouTube

As for Luckey’s robotic stand-in, look no further than the Phantom robot from company Foundation.

Founder Sankaet Pathak said on X in early 2025 that his company has no issue with being at the forefront of the weaponization of robotics.

“Unlike most humanoid robot companies in the U.S., which have committed to non-weaponization, we believe it’s essential for our robots to master these tasks to support human expansion,” Pathak said, per MikeKalil.com.

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