Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees virtual reality as a future computing platform that his company has a chance to own, though he admits it may take 5 – 10 years to bring it to the masses.
Members of the press had a rare opportunity to get a more unfiltered view into the future of Facebook’s virtual reality ambitions as Zuckerberg took to the stands today to testify in a $2 billion lawsuit surrounding the origins of Oculus, a VR company it acquired in March of 2014.
At the heart of its case is the claim that Oculus acquired information from former ZeniMax employee and current Oculus CTO John Carmack that was instrumental to the creation of the the company’s core technology, help that ZeniMax was never compensated for.
Zuckerberg told the courtroom that the company will likely invest more than $3 billion over the next decade to bring VR to hundreds of millions of users, the NYTimes reports.
Zuckerberg has already invested heavily in its VR play. Zuckerberg testified that prior to its acquisition, then-Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe was asking for $4 billion for the VR company. Facebook and Oculus eventually settled on a $2 billion purchase price along with $700 million in employee retention and $300 million in milestones.
These figures all show the dedication that Zuckerberg has to Facebook furthering its grasp on the virtual reality industry, something it likely hopes to spend billions innovating on not paying legal damages for.