Palmer Luckey might have found his next area of focus: laptops.
Luckey rose to prominence with the founding of Oculus in 2012. He sold the virtual reality company to Facebook in 2014, and after he was reportedlyfired in 2017,he co-founded a military tech firm called Anduril Industries that has primarily focused on the development of autonomous systems. (Including surveillance tools as well as both aerial and underwater vehicles.)
Anduril was followed by the announcement of a cryptocurrency-focused bank called Erebor earlier this month. (Luckey and several of Anduril’s co-founders, who also previously worked at Palantir Technologies, are unabashed in their obsession with “Lord of the Rings.” )But it seems Luckey might not be content with mil-tech and crypto.
Would you buy a Made In America computer from Anduril for 20% more than Chinese-manufactured options from Apple?June 11, 2025
Luckey previously asked the same question at the Reindustrialize Summit, a conference whosewebsitesaid it was devoted to “convening the brightest and most motivated minds at the intersection of technology and manufacturing,” which shared a clip of Luckey discussing the subject, wherein he talks about the extensive research he has already done around building a PC in the U.S.:
Here’s the moment where @PalmerLuckey interrupted @ashleevance at Reindustrialize to ask:“How many people in the audience would buy an American made computer if it was 20% more expensive?“The full clip is a great distillation of his thinking on the opportunity. https://t.co/aEvFdAxyBx pic.twitter.com/77qsvBJ52dJuly 20, 2025
Luckey wouldn’t be the first to make a laptop in the U.S. (PCMagcollecteda list of domestic PCs, including laptops, in 2021.) But those products use components sourced from elsewhere; they’reassembledin the U.S. rather thanmanufacturedthere. That distinction matters, according to the Made in USA Standardpublishedby the Federal Trade Commission. To quote:
“For a product to be called Made in USA, or claimed to be of domestic origin without qualifications or limits on the claim, the product must be ‘all or virtually all’ made in the U.S. [which] means that the final assembly or processing of the product occurs in the United States, all significant processing that goes into the product occurs in the United States, and all or virtually all ingredients or components of the product are made and sourced in the United States. That is, the product should contain no — or negligible — foreign content.”
So it would be interesting to see if Anduril could produce a laptop that meets the FTC’s standards, though it seems unlikely that sourcing exclusively American-made components would result in a mere 20% price bump, especially if performance is competitive with the recent MacBook models to which Luckey is comparing the company’s hypothetical wares.How much more would you be willing to pay for a laptop that was truly made in America? Let us know in the comments.
Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
FollowTom’s Hardware on Google Newsto get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. verify to click the Follow button.
Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.
