One may know Palmer Luckey as the 33-year-old CEO of Anduril, a defense technology company with close ties to the US government, or as the genius who sold Oculus VR to Facebook at just 21 years old. Luckey’s entrepreneurial journey began even earlier—with ModRetro, a business he founded as a teenager in Long Beach that grew from an online video game modification platform.
ModRetro is in talks for a new funding round that could value the company at $1 billion, reports the Financial Times, citing sources familiar with the matter. That would mark a milestone for the startup, which sells modern versions of classic game consoles. ModRetro did not respond to requests for comment from the Observer.
At first glance, a retro gaming company might seem like a curious side project for a defense technology executive. But Luckey never fit the typical Silicon Valley mold. Instead of fleece vests and sneakers, he is often seen in Hawaiian shirts, flip-flops and board shorts. A dedicated gamer, Luckey even attempted to acquire large private video game collections and reportedly he keeps his own underground in a decommissioned nuclear missile site.
ModRetro released its first product, ModRetro Chromatic, in 2024. Priced at $199, the handheld console pays tribute to the Nintendo Game Boy, keeping up with its classic design while still being compatible with original Game Boy titles. According to Luckey’s blog, he spent 17 years developing “the ultimate Game Boy-inspired device” before finalizing the design.
When Luckey built Oculus and Anduril, ModRetro evolved alongside them from a niche forum to a full-fledged startup. The company is now led by former Anduril and Oculus developer Torin Herndon and recently raised $19 million by 2024.
Luckey first broke into the mainstream in 2014, when he sold Oculus, his virtual reality headset company, to Facebook (now Meta) for $2 billion. After a few years at Facebook, he founded Anduril, which develops autonomous defense technology and counts the US Department of Defense among its major clients. The company was valued at $30.5 billion last year and is reportedly in talks to nearly double that figure to $60 billion, according to the Financial Times.
If Anduril is Luckey’s professional phone, ModRetro is his passion project—less focused on profit and more on nostalgia. As he put it during an appearance on the TBPN podcast, “As the gaming industry is financially and exponentially growing, there are many things that are lost. The need to make more money has taken things away from what I think were good product decisions in the 80s and 90s.”
Next ModRetro: a reimagined version of the Nintendo 64, the popular console discontinued in the early 2000s, will soon be released in four colors.
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