In a move that resembles a fairy tale ending for Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, Anduril and Meta have announced a collaboration to develop extended reality (XR) devices for the U.S. military. This partnership was revealed in a blog post by Anduril, marking a significant milestone for the company.

Luckey expressed his enthusiasm for the partnership, stating, “I am glad to be working with Meta once again. My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that.” His words underscore the potential of this collaboration to revolutionize the military’s use of technology.

The partnership stems from the Soldier Borne Mission Command (SBMC) Next program, previously known as the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) Next. Initially, Microsoft was awarded a $22 billion contract in 2018 to develop HoloLens-like AR glasses for soldiers. However, due to persistent issues, the Army reassigned the program’s management to Anduril in February, with Microsoft retaining its role as a cloud provider. The ultimate goal is to have multiple suppliers of mixed reality glasses for soldiers.

As a result of this development, Meta, Luckey’s former employer, needed to partner with Anduril to tap into the lucrative market of military VR/AR/XR headsets. This collaboration will enable Meta to leverage its expertise in extended reality technology, while Anduril will provide its command and control software, known as Lattice.

The devices being developed will utilize technology from Meta’s AR/VR research center, Reality Labs, and will incorporate Meta’s Llama AI model. The intended outcome is to provide soldiers with a real-time, heads-up display of battlefield intelligence. This capability has the potential to significantly enhance the military’s operational effectiveness.

Luckey appears to have put his past differences with Meta behind him, as evidenced by his positive comments on the partnership. His history with the company is well-documented, having been famously fired from Facebook in 2017, following the company’s acquisition of his startup, Oculus, for $2 billion. Luckey subsequently founded Anduril in 2017, alongside co-founders Brian Schimpf, Trae Stephens, and Matt Grimm.

According to an Anduril spokesperson, the product family being developed by Meta and Anduril is called EagleEye, which will comprise an ecosystem of devices. Notably, EagleEye was the name given to Anduril’s initial imagined headset in the company’s pitch deck draft. Luckey’s investors had advised him to focus on building software first, rather than pursuing hardware development.

In a tweet posted in February, after winning the IVAS contract, Luckey reflected on the journey that had brought him to this point. He acknowledged that his initial focus on proving himself right and his former employers wrong had been misguided, and that his investors had correctly advised him to prioritize software development.

Following the announcement of the partnership, Luckey took to X to express his excitement about the collaboration. He noted that the partnership brings together the best of what he had developed before Meta acquired Oculus, what they had created together, and what Anduril had achieved independently after his departure from Facebook.

In a symbolic gesture of reconciliation, Anduril has launched a Facebook page, marking a new chapter in the company’s relationship with Meta. This move suggests that Luckey has truly put his past differences behind him, as he embarks on this new collaboration with his former employer.