0
200
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
400
600
$800 million
VR HARDWARE
VR ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE
VR CONSUMER SOFTWARE
TOTAL:
$280.7
MILLION
VENTURE INVESTMENTS IN VR
SOURCE: NIELSEN SUPERDATA
$51.9 M.
$149.4 M.
$79.3 M.
48
FORTUNE.COM // JULY 2019
inside a virtual reality to “span geographi-
cal boundaries,” as Facebook director of
VR product management Sean Liu says.
“We’re really thinking and pushing the no-
tion of how we bring you and your avatar
into VR. How do we allow you to emote
and have social expression to really con-
nect together and do different activities?”
In the reality we live in today, VR isn’t a
prevalent tool of communication. But that
hasn’t dampened Facebook’s enthusiasm
for it. “I don’t know exactly when it’s going
to be a big deal,” Zuckerberg said in a call
with investors last year. “When we started
talking about this, I said that I thought
that this is going to be a 10-year journey
before this was really a very mainstream
and major platform.” Just about halfway
down the road, the futuristic technology is
nowhere near realizing Zuckerberg’s vision.
THE MASKED ROBBER points a gun
in my face and shuffles me and
a sobbing woman into a back
room. “Take this fucking bag,
pick it up, and fill it up!” he
screams. “Everything!” Now he’s motioning
short, Carne y Arena. “So, in that sense, we succeeded. Except it
didn’t become a mainstream thing. There just isn’t any evidence
that anyone is willing to pay for narrative VR content outside of
a theme park.”
In retrospect, Mark Zuckerberg was so enamored with the
theoretical potential of VR that it appears he spent billions
without having thought through how to make a business of it. “It
was a platform play,” says Blake Harris, author of the optimisti-
cally titled The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and
the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality. “He had a popular
app. But in his mind there’s always going to be this problem of
living on other people’s platforms. You’re beholden to Microsoft,
Google, and Apple.”
Indeed, Zuckerberg and his minions have described VR as the
logical next step in the social experience Facebook itself created
for billions of people. Just as it digitized the analog behavior
of keeping up with one’s friends, now Facebook wants people
DIM V IE W:
VE N T URE
INVESTMENT
IN VR TRENDS
DOWNWARD.
In 2016, VR’s peak
venture year, VCs
pumped $857 million
into VR startups.
But in 2018, VR
funding was down to
$280 million, ceding
ground to promising
related technolo-
gies, augmented and
mixed reality.
BRAINSTORM TECH VIRTUAL REALITY
GRAPHIC BY NICOLAS RAPP
