Palmer Luckey: The Next Elon Musk Behind Anduril

Palmer Luckey is the founder Banyan Hill’s new presentation calls “the next Elon Musk,” and the comparison is doing real work in the pitch. Matt Milner’s Next Elon presentation for Banyan Hill’s Grey Swan Investment Fraternity is built around Luckey’s defense company Anduril, and the numbers Milner stacks to make the case are Musk’s own: “the gain of 132,000% he delivered to investors in his first company, Zip2, in just four years,” PayPal turning “$15 million into $1.5 billion,” and Tesla shares up 1,210,000% over two decades.

The pitch’s promise is a redo of that history: “for every $1,000 that you invest into what you learn about today, I believe that realistically, you could 10x your money in the next 12 to 24 months.” Our full Next Elon teardown covers the presentation end to end. This piece focuses on the man at the center of it.

From Oculus to the Pentagon

Luckey’s story is unusually well documented for a newsletter protagonist. He founded Oculus VR at 19, sold it to Facebook for roughly $2 billion in 2014, and then, instead of staying in consumer tech, founded Anduril Industries in 2017 to rebuild defense software and autonomy around Silicon Valley methods. The press characterizations Milner quotes are real: the Financial Times called him “Silicon Valley’s Oppenheimer,” and MIT’s media described Anduril as poised to change the future.

The mission framing Luckey brings to it, quoted from his 60 Minutes appearance in the presentation: “We shouldn’t be sending our people to stand in other countries, putting our men and women, our sons and daughters at risk for the sovereignty of other nations.” Milner adds: “The biggest motivating factor for this company and for Palmer Luckey, it’s to never lose another American soldier.”

Why the Musk Comparison Fits

The structural argument is that Anduril is where Tesla was early: a founder-led company attacking a legacy industry with vertically integrated technology, racing from a standing start to tens of billions in contract value. Anduril has raised over $10 billion across funding rounds, won a reported roughly $20 billion ten-year U.S. Army contract, took over the Army’s IVAS headset program from Microsoft, and is building the Arsenal-1 hyperscale manufacturing facility in Ohio to produce its Ghost Shark autonomous submarine for the U.S. Navy.

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is Anduril’s lead backer, and the presentation claims Thiel’s investment is “literally the largest investment in the history of Thiel’s firm.” Founders Fund’s lead position is verified; the specific dollar figure is presented without confirmation.

The timing argument is what Milner calls “the sweet spot”: “The perfect time to invest the sweet spot is when a new tech trend has already been proven to work but when it’s just starting to be commercialized.” His proof that the mainstream has not arrived: “Palmer Luckey, Anduril, these names, they haven’t made it to the mainstream yet.”

The Catch: It Is Private

Anduril is not publicly traded, which is where most “next Elon” stories end. This one does something rarer: it hands you a real answer inside the video. XOVR, the ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF, holds Anduril among its private-company sleeve. Milner spells it out letter by letter, “X-O-V-R,” and is blunt about what you get: “you can get this four-letter ticker symbol for free, no credit card needed, no email address to fill in, no strings at all.”

He is also honest about the ETF’s limits, which is a credibility point worth crediting: “XOVR isn’t exactly a pure play on Anduril… Anduril isn’t even in the fund’s top 10 holdings. In fact, private companies only make up 15% of the fund itself.” The paid research routes the 10x thesis through three Anduril suppliers instead: a battery maker, a defense systems firm, and a chip company, delivered in the report “How to 10X Your Money with the Secret Suppliers of Anduril.”

The Investment Context

The macro story Milner brands as AWE, “Autonomous Warfare Everywhere”: defense budgets shifting from Cold War-era weapons programs that “take 10 to 20 years to deploy” toward autonomous, AI-driven systems. The Palantir precedent hangs over the whole thesis; it was 2024’s best-performing S&P 500 stock and proved public markets will re-rate defense-software hybrids. For more on that theme, see our AI defense stocks coverage and the Arsenal defense stock pitch from Behind the Markets.

The offer is a $299 three-month Grey Swan trial with a 30-day full refund, including the main supplier report, two bonus reports, and access to Milner’s library of over 51 research reports. Milner’s own track record numbers in the pitch, including 14,452% on Tesla over 11 years, are presented without methodology, so treat them as highlights rather than audited results.

The Honest Read

Luckey is the most credible “next Elon” candidate we have seen a newsletter build a pitch around: a real founder, a real company, real contracts, and a genuinely free backdoor ticker. The speculative part is the supplier layer, where a 10x depends on picking the right small caps before the mainstream notices Anduril. That is a real thesis with real risk, which is roughly what a fair reader should want from a pitch like this.

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