Palmer Luckey's Erebor bank receives federal charter — the first full-service national bank charter in years
Feb 20, 2026 with Palmer Luckey & Jonathan Gould
Key Points
- Palmer Luckey's Erebor bank receives its federal charter from the OCC, the first full-service national bank charter issued under Comptroller Jonathan Gould's seven-month tenure.
- Erebor deployed $350 million in regulatory capital and targets deep tech, hard tech, energy, and defense companies that Luckey argues lack aligned banking infrastructure.
- Luckey founded Erebor after Silicon Valley Bank's 2023 collapse exposed a gap in banking services for capital-intensive, defense-adjacent industries rather than creating one.
Summary
Palmer Luckey's Erebor bank has received its federal charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and is now operating as a full-service national bank. The charter is the first issued under Comptroller Jonathan Gould's tenure, which began approximately seven months before the segment was recorded.
Luckey founded Erebor after the 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which he describes as a failure that "took everybody's money." The new bank serves deep tech, hard tech, energy, and defense-adjacent companies. Luckey argues these sectors lacked aligned banking infrastructure in the U.S. financial system.
Erebor required $350 million in regulatory capital held in reserve to backstop the bank's operations. That capital is now in place and the bank is live.
The gap Luckey identified was not a shortage of banks broadly but a shortage of banks aligned with the specific industries and risk profiles of U.S. deep tech and defense builders. SVB's failure did not create that need but exposed it.