Facebook spent even more on Oculus than everyone realizes
Back in March 2014, Facebook announced it acquired Oculus, the "leader in immersive virtual reality technology, for a total of approximately $2 billion."
Turns out that was fake news — or maybe just a poorly written lede.
Facebook did acquire Oculus, but the price tag was much larger than previously stated and widely reported. The realization came after the attorney for video game maker ZeniMax Media (which is suing Facebook for allegedly stealing the intellectual property) directly asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in court testimony Tuesday.
Facebook paid $2 billion for the company plus an additional $700 million to retain employees and $300 million for earn-out, he said. That brings the total cost to bring Oculus under the Facebook umbrella as $3 billion.
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Facebook stated in its own press release at the time that the company issued $400 million in cash, common stock valued at $1.6 billion and $300 million earn-out. With those numbers, the press and Facebook continuously low-balled the "approximately $2 billion," and simply neglected a cool $700 million.
Oculus had approximately 75 employees at the time of the acquisition.
Even with the new price tag, Oculus is far from Facebook's most expensive deal to date. Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2015.
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
