Oculus Rift receives new funding for official launch!

**Name** · 06-18-2013

$16 million to bring virtual reality to market.

Oculus VR has received $16 million in funding to bring the virtual reality headset to consumers.

The Oculus Rift company announced overnight that $16 million has been raised via Spark Capital and Matrix Partners. Representatives for both companies will join the Oculus VR Inc board of directors.

The funding is aimed at bringing the virtual reality headset to market. Oculus VR has previously suggested it hopes to bring the device to consumers in 2014.

"Oculus began with a single mission: to put players inside the game," Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey said in a statement. "This investment allows us to deliver immersive and affordable virtual reality to players everywhere."

Matrix Partners spokesperson Antonio Rodriguez said the Oculus Rift represents the future of gaming. "What Palmer, Brendan and the team are building at Oculus so closely matches the Metaverse, we had to be a part of it. Working with them to get this platform to market at scale will be enormously exciting."

The Oculus Rift raised over $2 million dollars on Kickstarter last year to fund the creation of dev kits. Major developers including id Software's John Carmack and Valve's Gabe Newell have thrown their weight behind the project.

Dev kits were distributed earlier this year, but the company has no firm plans to release it to consumers beyond a vague 2014 release window.

Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe said there is still more work to be done to Oculus Rift before it is fit to go to market. "There are still many challenging problems to solve, but with the support of these great investment partners, and our passionate community, we will continue to hire the brightest minds and stay laser focused on delivering the very best virtual reality platform possible."

Picture of Oculus Rift: