A dropout living in a trailer, he got $1 million from Peter Thiel at 19—now he’s a billionaire who says the American Dream isn’t dead

Palmer Luckey's success story—going from a college dropout living in a trailer to building Oculus and selling it for $2 billion by age 21—is presented as proof that the American Dream endures. Receiving initial funding from Peter Thiel, he later founded Anduril, a defense tech company now valued at $61 billion, and Erebor Bank, which also received major financial backing.