Breaking Down Billion-Dollar AR/VR Investment In The Last 12 Months

Augmented/Virtual Tech, Real InvestmentAugmented and virtual reality are the new hotness, as VCs and corporates get in on the act. While Facebook’s multi-billion dollar acquisition of Oculus got everyone’s attention early last year, it’s only in the last 12 months that investments accelerated.

There was a slow trickle of AR/VR investments from 2006 until late 2014. Then Magic Leapraised $542 million from Google and others. This was the starting gun for investment accelerating, with nearly $1 billion poured into the sector in the last 12 months.

Last quarter alone saw more than 6x the investment in the market from Q2 2014. While VC and corporate communities are still developing an informed focus on the industry, their interest has never been higher.

Digi-Capital AR-VR investments 2011 to 2015

Magic Leap took more than half the money in the last 12 months, and there are reports that they’re raising another billion. VCs and corporates have also become excited beyond our Floridian friends, with an impressive diversity of investment in a market that hasn’t really launched yet.

There have been significant investments in AR/VR head-mounted displays, video, solutions/services, advertising/marketing, games and apps. As the ecosystem begins to take shape, the investment community is providing the fuel to take AR/VR skywards.

Not An Exit Market Yet

Facebook’s Oculus acquisition was another catalyst for investors and corporates, but there has been a bigger impact on investment than M&A so far.

The AR/VR market delivered $250 million of M&As in the last 12 months, with Intel buying Recon accounting for around three-quarters of the total. That could change dramatically next year, as major corporates try to leapfrog the competition through buying hot startups.

Virtually Guaranteed To Be Augmented

With the AR/VR market beginning to launch, the investment community today is divided into true believers like Intel, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, and those taking a wait and see attitude.

There will be bumps in the road next year, but fortune favors the brave in early stage investment markets. When the market gets going and there are a few more chunky exits, it’s going to become increasingly hard for folks to stay on the sidelines.

Comments

Five budget-friendly open source storage servers

Storage is essential for the enterprise: Data must be stored. Data must be retrieved. Data must be shared. Data must be secured. At the same time, storage must not consume the entirety of your IT budget. Fortunately, you can find effective solutions in the world of open source. Outside of cost effectiveness, one of the biggest benefits of these solutions is the ability to modify them to perfectly fit your needs. You can make minor changes or even roll your own storage solution based on one of these tools. If you want enterprise support and a "solution in a can" that will meet just about any enterprise storage need, you should turn to Red Hat or SUSE. Both Linux-based companies offer some of the most powerful enterprise-ready tools on the market. But if you'd rather get your hands dirty and craft something of your own—something that won't demolish your budget—these five open source tools are a great place to start. 1: ownCloud ownCloud ( Figure ...

Google Announces “Purchases On Google” For Buying Straight From PLAs And Other Mobile Shopping Updates

The much-anticipated buy button in Google search ads is finally here. Called Purchases On Google, it turns out the new feature isn’t a button at all. “Buy on Google” messaging will appear in eligible product listing ads on both iOS and Android smartphones. Purchases on Google is launching in a very limited pilot with select retailers. When consumers click on Purchases On Google-enabled ads, they’ll be taken to a page hosted by Google where they can make a purchase using payment criteria stored with Google. The orders are then passed through to the retailer for fulfillment and any customer service follow up. Check out our full coverage where you’ll find many more details about Purchases On Google on our sister site Marketing Land. Google also announced several of other updates to mobile PLAs: New Mobile Shopping Ad Formats For Voice Search When consumers use voice search to find products, Google is starting to show...

Iron Man Galaxy S6 Edge Arrives With An Arc Reactor Charger

Samsung’s Iron Man-branded Galaxy S6 Edge arrives tomorrow, with a custom paint job, 64GB of on-board storage and a limited edition wireless charger accessory with an appropriate arc reactor graphic included on top. It ships with a clear cover, too, so you can protect your precious “armor” when ticketing around in the real world. The box it comes in is also red and gold, and there’s a big ol’ Iron Man helmet stencil graphic on the back of the device, too, as well as a software theme to match. I probably would’ve left off the face personally, letting the colors speak for themselves, but this was a partnership with Marvel with the intent of promoting the new Avengers film oversees, so they probably could’ve been a lot less tasteful with the branding overall. The sad news for those of you who were hoping to advertise their Stark fandom on their phones is that availability is listed as only Korea as of tomorrow, with sales beginning in China and Hong Kong...

Visa confirms Coinbase wasn’t at fault for overcharging users

Yesterday, we wrote that Coinbase customers were being charged multiple times for past transactions. While some speculated that the erroneous withdraws were down to a Coinbase engineering issue, Coinbase issued a statement saying it wasn’t liable for the duplicate charges. The blame, instead, rested with Visa for the way it handled a migration of merchant categories for cryptocurrencies, Coinbase said. While you can read my post yesterday for an in-depth description of what happened, the basic gist is that Visa refunded and recharged (under a different merchant category) a month of old transactions. Many users saw the recharge come through before the refund processed, making it look like they were double charged. Honestly, the issue was likely exacerbated by existing payment rails — it’s normal for refunds to take multiple days to show up on credit and debit statements. But here’s where it gets weird — this morning Visa issued a statement to some publications shifting the blam...

Trump cites Facebook exec’s comments downplaying Russian ad influence on election

You’d be forgiven for missing Donald Trump’s multiple retweets of Facebook executive Rob Goldman over the weekend. Perhaps you were spending time with family, watching Black Panther or just attempting to forget politics for a moment by ignoring the manic flurry of social media updates from the leader of the free world. But in amongst a deluge of tweets that blamed Democrats for failing to preserve DACA, called out the FBI over the recent school shooting in Florida on the FBI and affectionately referred to a member of congress as “Liddle’ Adam Schiff, the leakin’ monster of no control,” the President cited Facebook’s VP of Ads as evidence against claims that his campaign colluded with Russia. “The Fake News Media never fails,” Trump tweeted over the weekend. “Hard to ignore this fact from the Vice President of Facebook Ads, Rob Goldman!” Trump was citing Goldman’s own Twitter dump over the past week, responding to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s recent indictment of 13 Russian...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog