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AR/VR investments hit $1.1B in first two months of 2016, already beating last year’s total

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

Augmented reality and virtual reality investment reached $1.1 billion in the first 2 months of this year, according to tech advisor Digi-Capital. That figure is impressive because it beats the $686 million in AR/VR investments for all of 2015, and this is the first time that AR/VR investment has topped a billion dollars in any year.

About $794 million came from the big Magic Leap round of investment, which was confirmed on February 2. Another $300 million went into AR/VR solutions and services, VR hardware, advertising and marketing, distribution, apps and games, video, and peripherals. Even without Magic Leap, investment is up 20 percent so far in the first quarter of 2016, compared to the $250 million invested in Q4 2015. Plus, another four weeks are left for investors to boost AR/VR this quarter.

Tim Merel, managing director of Digi-Capital and CEO of Eyetouch Reality, predicts that AR/VR revenues will hit $120 billion by 2020. Last year, AR/VR investments hit $686 million, and the investment in AR/VR has been growing for the past six quarters. Not every category is benefiting from the huge inflow of money into AR/VR. For instance, game investment and acquisitions dropped 81 percent in 2015. But, that is expected to change because of the closing of the Magic Leap and King deals in 2016.

Digi-Capital says AR/VR investments hit $1.1B in first two months of 2016.
Digi-Capital says AR/VR investments hit $1.1B in the first two months of 2016.

 

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.