Oculus VR secures $75 million from investors to build consumer version

Shawn Knight

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oculus rift investment virtual reality goggles

Oculus VR, makers of the highly anticipated virtual reality headset known as the Oculus Rift, just wrapped up a $75 million Series B round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, the same investment firm that was instrumental in recently helping digital currency wallet and payment processor Coinbase secure $25 million in funding.

Marc Andreessen and fellow partner Chris Dixon have also joined the Oculus board of directors. Dixon told The Verge he was impressed with the developer kit he saw last year but not enough to bring any money to the table for backing. The latest version changed his mind.

The extra year has given the development team time to improve some key specifications including head tracking, latency and resolution, Dixon said.

The virtual reality company managed to raise $16 million back in June to help finish research and development on the Oculus Rift. But according to Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe, they didn’t have the money necessary to build a consumer product. This latest round of funding, however, changes all that.

Iribe said they always knew they needed a B round to build a consumer product at volume as things like the cost of hardware and setting up the infrastructure aren’t exactly cheap.

Unfortunately for anxious gamers, the chief didn’t reveal when we could expect to see a consumer version of the Oculus Rift hit retail although they have moved more than 40,000 developer kits expectations to sell 70,000 total developer units before the consumer model arrives.

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This is exactly what they need so we can break from traditional computing and make the move into VR!
 
This is exactly what the gaming industry needs. More powerfull PCs or consoles for better hi-resolution graphics thus better immersion into the game is fine but the Oculus VR will give it the other level that we've been waiting for a long time now.
 
Wow, way to go! I'm fascinated by this technology and have been watching closely. I'm also very surprised to hear it's sold 40,000 units to date. That's incredible for a product that isn't even officially "on the market," as they say.
 
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