The people behind the highly anticipated virtual reality headset known as the Oculus Rift secured 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.
Oculus VR managed to raise $16 million back in June to help finish research and development on the Oculus Rift, but according to 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.
Iribe has yet to reveal a date for the release of a consumer version of the Oculus Rift 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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