Palmer Freeman Luckey was the kind of wunderkind Silicon Valley venerates. When he was just 21, he made an overnight fortune selling his start-up, a company called Oculus VR that made virtual-reality gear, to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014.
But the success story took a sideways turn this year when Mr. Luckey was pressured to leave Facebook months after news spread that he had secretly donated to an organization dedicated to spreading anti-Hillary Clinton internet memes.
While Mr. Luckey slammed inaccuracies in the articles, the reports proved toxic in the tech industry, where hostility to President Trump is as pervasive as overpriced coffee.
The spokesman for a new medium — virtual reality — briefly became an exile.
Now Mr. Luckey is back. Unburdened by a big company’s culture, he’s more freely sharing his politics on social media. He also contributed $100,000 to Mr. Trump’s inauguration, through one of his companies, according to Federal Election Commission records.
And he has a new start-up in the works, a company that is developing surveillance technology that could be deployed on borders between countries and around military bases, according to three people familiar with the plan who asked for anonymity because it’s still confidential. They said the investment fund run by Peter Thiel, a technology adviser to Mr. Trump, planned to support the effort.
