Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, Meta CTO and Reality Labs chief, has issued a public apology to Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus who was removed from the company in 2017 due to political reasons.
Even now, Meta (formerly Facebook) has never officially disclosed the reason behind Luckey’s dismissal. CEO Mark Zuckerberg even stated during a U.S. congressional hearing in 2018 that Luckey’s departure “was not because of a political view.”
However, it was a political action that seemingly caused Luckey to fall out of favor with company leadership, leading to his ousting in March 2017, just three years after Meta acquired Oculus for $2 billion.
“I got fired for no reason. I gave $10,000 to a pro-Trump group, and I think that’s something to do with it,” Luckey mentioned in a 2018 Wall Street Journal interview, referring to his 2016 donation to an anti-Hillary Clinton ad campaign called ‘Nimble America’.
The strained relationship between Luckey and Meta has persisted over the years, leading Luckey to exit the consumer XR space completely and establish his defense technology company, Anduril Industries.
Carmack’s Regret, Boz & Luckey Showdown
Former Oculus CTO John Carmack, who departed the company in 2022, reignited the tension this April in a post on X, expressing regret for not standing up more for Palmer Luckey at Facebook. Carmack suggested that if the former Oculus founders had united, the outcome might have been different.
Carmack also believed that Luckey’s firing was a result of internal employee pressure and not due to Mark Zuckerberg’s personal stance on the matter.
As a prominent figure and a key insider at Meta during his tenure, Carmack’s words carry significant weight, prompting Bosworth to join the conversation.
In response to Carmack, Bosworth refuted his speculation about an employee referendum to remove Luckey, stating “I am not in a position to correct, except to say maybe don’t speculate!”
When Boz claimed he had defended Luckey before his departure, Luckey was quick to respond:
“Great story to tell now that I have dragged myself back to relevance, but you aren’t credible. You retweeted posts claiming I donated to white supremacists, and a post saying that anyone who supports Trump because they don’t like Hillary Clinton is a shitty human being. You publicly told everyone my departure had nothing to do with politics, which is absolutely insane and obviously contradicted by reams of internal communications. It is like saying the sky is green. Same goes for you telling people that I wasn’t pressured into saying anything untrue, that any mention of politics and who I was voting for was up to me. Can I post my original statement, the one that was explicitly rejected on account of saying negative things about Hillary Clinton, or is that still considered Work Product? Maybe you are lying, maybe you are just ignorant and willing to launder the lies of others about something you weren’t even around for, but don’t try to play the apolitical hero here.”
If you enjoy watching two multi-millionaires engage in a non-political argument, be sure not to miss the rest of the conversation.
Boz Brokers Peace
Almost five months after the online dispute, Luckey was invited back to the Meta headquarters for the first time since his departure in 2017. He had the opportunity to test the company’s Orion AR glasses prototype and received a face-to-face apology from Bosworth, which the Meta CTO reiterated in a recent post on X.
“I’m glad you came by to check out Orion. I mentioned this in person, but I also wanted to publicly apologize for my previous comments about your time at (then) Oculus. I’m sorry,” Bosworth expressed. “After reading the recent Tablet piece, I delved into some of the events that occurred before my tenure when a different group of individuals, who are no longer with the company, were in charge. I discovered that I was misinformed, but that’s no excuse, and since I wasn’t involved, I should have refrained from commenting. I appreciate the impact you had on the company and on the development of VR as a whole. I look forward to showcasing more of our work in the future.”
“Thanks, Boz. Apology accepted,” Luckey responded. “I am infamously good at holding grudges, but Meta has changed a lot over the past 8 years. The people responsible for my ouster and internal/external smear campaign aren’t even around anymore. At some point, the Ship of Theseus has sailed.”
Luckey added that it was “pretty surreal to be back on campus with you guys, Orion alone was well worth the trip. It is more or less exactly what I would have wanted to accomplish.”
The Tablet exposé referenced by Bosworth even included kind words directly from Zuckerberg, which Luckey highlighted in an X post as not coming from the usual “PR flunkey”:
“I have a huge amount of respect for Palmer—both for what he’s done for VR and for now achieving the rare feat of building multiple successful companies,” Zuckerberg told Tablet in a statement this month, his first regarding Luckey in several years. “He’s an impressive free-thinker and fun to work with. I was sad when his time at Meta came to an end, but the silver lining is that his work at Anduril is going to be extremely important for our national security. I’m glad an entrepreneur of his caliber is working on these problems. I hope we can find ways to work together in the future.”
