- Palmer Luckey said he invested in Meta after its rebranding despite being fired in 2016.
- Luckey was skeptical of the "buzzword" metaverse but said he bet all his liquid cash on Meta.
- Meta's metaverse push came before the rise of GenAI and chatbots.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey was fired from Facebook in 2016, but that didn't stop him from betting on the company five years later.
When Facebook announced that it would rebrand to Meta in 2021, Luckey used it as an investment opportunity despite having "never really bought into" the metaverse "buzzword," he said during an episode of the "What's News" podcast.
Yet, "the day that Meta changed their name from Facebook to Meta, I did take literally all of my liquid cash and use it to buy Meta shares," Luckey said.
Before generative artificial intelligence and chatbots boomed in popularity, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was pitching another buzzy idea, the metaverse, to investors and consumers. It was a virtual reality world accessible through VR headsets.
Silicon Valley eventually moved on, however, and the metaverse was declared dead in 2023 by Ed Zitron in an obituary for Business Insider.
Zuckerberg told investors that Meta is planning $60 billion to $65 billion in capital expenditure for 2025, with AI being a main focus. Luckey, however, isn't so sure it's time to say "rest in peace" to the metaverse.
"There's been a lot more talk of AI, but that's what you have to do when you're a publicly traded company, and investors are comparing you with your peers, and they see that their peers are heavily investing in AI," he said when asked about his position on Meta's current vision.
Still, Luckey said, their public communications aren't exactly an indicator "of where strategic priorities truly are in someone's brain." He used himself as an example, saying his priorities for 2026 haven't been publicly discussed.
Meta, then Facebook, acquired Oculus for $2 billion in cash and stock in 2014. Luckey remained with the company, working on its VR headset efforts, until he was fired in 2016. His dismissal came after he donated to an anti-Hillary Clinton political group, though Meta denied that was why he was fired.
He has previously said he's taken his ousting as a business lesson. He has no problem seeing Zuckerberg around at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago these days, Luckey said during the episode.
