Meta Platforms acquisition history

LiveRail, founded in 2007, is a video advertising technology platform (a video supply-side platform) that helped publishers such as MLB.com, ABC Family, A&E Networks, Gannett, and Dailymotion serve better ads in their video content. Facebook acquired it to combine LiveRail's publisher tools with its own relevance, delivery, and measurement capabilities to improve video advertising. Deal terms were not disclosed by Facebook.

CTRL-labs is a neural-interface startup whose technology decodes electrical signals the brain sends to the hand and finger muscles and translates them into digital commands, enabling wrist-based control of devices. Facebook acquired it in 2019, folding the team into Facebook Reality Labs to build next-generation human-computer interaction for AR and VR. Founder Thomas Reardon became FRL's Director of Neuromotor Interfaces. Deal terms were not disclosed.

Beat Games is the Prague-based studio behind Beat Saber, one of the most popular VR games. Facebook acquired it into Oculus Studios as an independently operated studio to accelerate its VR content, adding more music and features to Beat Saber and bringing it to more players. Deal terms were not disclosed.

Kustomer is a customer-relationship-management (CRM) platform that lets businesses manage customer interactions across channels. Facebook acquired it to give businesses better service and support tools as more customer communication shifted to messaging on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. The deal was completed in 2022 after EU regulatory clearance. Deal terms were not officially disclosed.

Parakey was an early web-to-desktop application platform built by Firefox co-creator Blake Ross and developer Joe Hewitt, designed to bridge locally installed software with web-based services. Facebook acquired the startup in 2007 primarily for its founding engineering talent, who went on to work on Facebook's platform and mobile efforts (Hewitt later built the first Facebook iPhone app).

ConnectU (originally HarvardConnection) was a college-focused social networking site created by Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra. Facebook took over ConnectU in 2008 as part of resolving the founders’ long-running lawsuit alleging that the original Facebook concept had been taken from their project; ConnectU’s assets were folded into Facebook and the site was shut down.

FriendFeed was a real-time feed aggregator, founded by ex-Google engineers including Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit, that let users share and follow updates across many online services in one stream. Facebook acquired it in August 2009 for its real-time sharing technology and senior engineering and product talent, several of whom took leadership roles at Facebook.

Since I first tried FriendFeed, I've admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information.Mark Zuckerberg — Facebook Founder and CEO

Octazen was a Malaysia-based startup that built contact-importing and address-book aggregation technology used by many social services to help users find friends. Facebook acquired the small team in early 2010 to strengthen its contact-import and friend-finding infrastructure.

Divvyshot was a photo-sharing startup that let groups collect and organize photos from an event into shared albums. Facebook acquired it in 2010 to bolster its photos product and bring on its small engineering team.

ShareGrove was a startup that built a platform for private online conversations and small-group discussions. Facebook acquired it in 2010 largely as an acqui-hire to support its groups and communication features.

Zenbe was a web-based email and messaging application company offering a unified inbox and lightweight collaboration tools. Facebook acquired the team in 2010 to support its messaging and communications efforts around the time it was building its unified Messages product.

Nextstop was a travel-recommendation service, founded by former Google employees, where users shared tips and suggestions about places to visit. Facebook acquired it in 2010 mainly as an acqui-hire, folding its team into Facebook's product organization.

Chai Labs, founded by Gokul Rajaram, built a platform for creating content-rich vertical websites along with related search and advertising technology. Facebook acquired the company in 2010 for its engineering team and technology, with Rajaram joining to work on Facebook's advertising products.

Hot Potato was a New York-based startup whose app let people post and share status updates tied to real-world activities and locations (check-ins). Facebook acquired it in 2010 for its team and social-activity technology, and the standalone service was shut down shortly after.

Drop.io was a simple file-sharing and real-time collaboration service that let users create private 'drops' to share files without accounts. Facebook acquired the company in 2010 primarily to bring on founder Sam Lessin, who joined to work on product; the standalone Drop.io service was wound down.

Rel8tion was an early-stage mobile and local advertising startup focused on hyper-local ad targeting. Facebook acquired it in 2011 as an acqui-hire to add talent and technology relevant to its mobile advertising ambitions.

Beluga was a group-messaging app built by three former Google employees that let users exchange messages within private groups. Facebook acquired it in March 2011 for both team and technology, and the product formed the foundation of the standalone Facebook Messenger app launched later that year.

Snaptu, based in Israel, built an application platform that delivered app-like experiences on basic feature phones over slower networks. Facebook acquired it in 2011 and used the technology to launch Facebook for Every Phone, extending its reach to non-smartphone users worldwide.

RecRec was a small computer-vision startup. Facebook acquired it in 2011 as an acqui-hire, bringing on its engineers for their computer-vision and image-recognition expertise.

Daytum was a personal-data collection and visualization service, co-founded by designer Nicholas Felton, that let people track and display everyday statistics about their lives. Facebook acquired it in 2011 as an acqui-hire, with Felton joining Facebook's design team to work on profile and timeline design.

Sofa was a Netherlands-based software design and engineering studio known for its high-quality user-interface and product design work. Facebook acquired it in 2011 as an acqui-hire to strengthen its design and product-engineering capabilities.

MailRank built technology that ranked and prioritized email contacts to surface a user's most important senders and clean up inbox clutter. Facebook acquired the small startup's team in an acqui-hire to strengthen its messaging and contact-ranking capabilities.

Push Pop Press developed a digital-publishing platform for interactive books and multimedia content, best known for producing Al Gore's interactive book 'Our Choice.' Facebook acquired the team to bring rich interactive-content design talent in-house, and the publishing platform itself was wound down.

Friend.ly operated a question-and-answer social app popular with younger users that encouraged people to answer prompts and discover others with shared interests. Facebook acquired the startup's team, adding social-app talent while the standalone service was discontinued.

Strobe was a startup building an HTML5-based framework for mobile web applications, founded by members of the SproutCore open-source JavaScript team. Facebook acquired the team to bolster its mobile and HTML5 engineering efforts.

Gowalla was a location-based social network built around checking in at places, collecting virtual stamps, and sharing travels with friends. Facebook brought on Gowalla's founders and several team members to work on products including Timeline, while the Gowalla check-in service was shut down.

Caffeinatedmind was a startup developing in-browser file-transfer technology for sending large files directly between users. Facebook acquired the team in an acqui-hire, adding engineering talent focused on file transfer and sharing.

Tagtile built a mobile customer-loyalty platform that let merchants reward repeat customers through a smartphone-based check-in device and app. Facebook acquired the team, with the loyalty service subsequently wound down.

Glancee developed a location-based social-discovery app that helped users find and connect with nearby people who shared common interests. Facebook acquired the startup to add ambient location and social-discovery talent, and the standalone app was shut down.

Lightbox.com was a London-based startup that built a popular Android photo-sharing app with filters and a photo feed. Facebook acquired the team in an acqui-hire to strengthen its mobile and photos engineering, and the Lightbox app was later discontinued.

Karma built a mobile app for social gifting that let users send physical gifts to friends directly from their phones. Facebook acquired the startup and its team, later using the technology to inform its Facebook Gifts commerce feature.

Face.com was a Tel Aviv-based company that built a leading facial-recognition platform used by web and mobile developers to detect and tag faces in photos. Facebook acquired the company to bring its facial-recognition technology and team in-house to improve photo tagging.

Spool developed a mobile app for bookmarking and saving web content and videos for offline viewing across devices. Facebook acquired the startup's team in an acqui-hire to strengthen its mobile engineering, and the Spool service was shut down.

Acrylic Software was a Vancouver-based design and engineering studio behind the Wallet secure-data app and the Pulp RSS news reader. Facebook acquired the team for its design and product talent, and the studio's apps were discontinued.

Threadsy was a startup whose Swaylo product analyzed social data to measure online influence and support social marketing. Facebook acquired the team in an acqui-hire, adding social-analytics and marketing engineering talent.

osmeta was a stealth-mode startup working on mobile systems software. Facebook acquired the team to add low-level mobile and systems engineering talent to its infrastructure efforts.

Storylane, from the team formerly behind Mixtent, operated a blogging and storytelling platform that made it easy for people to publish and share personal stories. Facebook acquired the team in an acqui-hire, and the Storylane service was subsequently shut down.

Hot Studio was a San Francisco-based independent design and user-experience agency known for brand, interaction and product design work. Facebook acquired the studio to add its team of designers and researchers to Facebook's growing in-house design organization.

Spaceport (Spaceport.io, built by Sibblingz) was a cross-platform engine that let developers write games in JavaScript and deploy them across iOS, Android and the web. Facebook acquired the team behind the technology to strengthen its mobile games and developer tooling.

Parse was a mobile backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform that provided developers with cloud data storage, push notifications, user management and other server-side building blocks for iOS, Android and web apps. Facebook acquired Parse to offer hosted tools for developers building cross-platform mobile applications.

By making Parse a part of Facebook Platform, we want to enable developers to rapidly build apps that span mobile platforms and devices.Facebook (Facebook Developers blog)

Monoidics was a UK-based company specializing in automated software verification and static analysis, using formal methods to detect bugs and memory errors in source code. Facebook acquired the team to bolster its internal engineering-tools and code-quality efforts.

Jibbigo, developed by Mobile Technologies LLC, was a mobile speech-translation app that could recognize and translate spoken phrases across many languages, including offline. Facebook acquired the team to strengthen its speech-recognition and machine-translation capabilities.

Onavo was an Israel-based mobile analytics and data-management company whose apps offered data compression and a VPN-based service while collecting insights on how people used mobile apps. Facebook acquired Onavo and made it the anchor of its first office in Israel.

SportStream was a real-time sports conversation and second-screen platform that aggregated and organized social discussion around live sporting events. Facebook acquired the team to enhance how sports and live events surface in the Facebook conversation ecosystem.

Little Eye Labs was a Bangalore, India-based startup building performance-analysis and monitoring tools for Android applications, helping developers measure resource usage and optimize apps. Facebook acquired the team as one of its first acquisitions in India.

Branch (Branch Media, maker of the Branch discussion platform and the Potluck link-sharing app) built tools for hosting focused online conversations and community discussion. Facebook acquired the team to form a New York-based Conversations group.

Ascenta was a UK-based designer of high-altitude, long-endurance solar-powered drones for delivering internet connectivity. Facebook acquired the team to help build its Connectivity Lab, part of the Internet.org initiative to bring internet access to unconnected regions.

Salorix was a data-science company that applied real-time analytics and machine learning to social marketing, helping brands optimize the reach and targeting of social content. Facebook acquired the team to strengthen its advertising and data-science capabilities.

ProtoGeo Oy was a Helsinki, Finland-based startup that built Moves, an activity- and fitness-tracking app using a smartphone's built-in sensors to passively log walking, running and daily movement. Facebook acquired the company, with Moves continuing to operate as a standalone app.

PrivateCore was a server-security company whose software used memory encryption and attestation to protect data in use on commodity servers against physical and malware-based attacks. Facebook acquired the team to enhance the security of its infrastructure.

WaveGroup Sound was an audio and sound-design studio known for its work on video games and interactive entertainment. Facebook acquired the studio to support audio work for its Oculus virtual-reality efforts.

Wit.ai was a Y Combinator startup offering an open natural-language platform and API that let developers build voice- and text-driven interfaces for apps and devices. Facebook acquired the company and kept the platform open and free for developers.

Facebook has the resources and talent to help us take the next step. Wit.ai will remain open and become entirely free for everyone.The Wit.ai Team

Quickfire Networks was a San Diego-based company that built technology for efficiently transcoding and compressing video across many formats and devices. Facebook acquired the team to improve the delivery and quality of video on its platform.

TheFind was a shopping search engine, founded in 2006, that indexed roughly 500 million products across some 500,000 online stores to help consumers find items to buy. Facebook acquired the company in March 2015, shut down TheFind's consumer service, and folded its team and product-search technology into Facebook.

Surreal Vision was a UK-based computer-vision team focused on real-time 3D scene reconstruction, building accurate digital representations of the real world. Acquired in May 2015, the team joined Oculus Research to advance presence and telepresence in virtual reality.

Endaga built low-cost 'cellular-network-in-a-box' technology that let rural communities operate their own independent mobile networks. Facebook hired the Endaga team in October 2015 to support its global connectivity and Internet.org efforts.

Pebbles Interfaces, based in Israel, spent five years developing custom optics, sensor systems and algorithms to detect and track hand movement. Oculus acquired the team in July 2015 to advance hand-tracking and human-computer interaction for virtual reality.

MSQRD (Masquerade Technologies), a Belarus-based startup, made a popular mobile app for real-time face-swapping and animated AR video filters. Facebook acquired it in March 2016 and integrated its face-filter technology while keeping the app running independently.

Two Big Ears, an Edinburgh-based startup, built spatial 3D audio software for immersive cinematic and gaming experiences. Facebook acquired it in May 2016, relaunched its Spatial Workstation as the free Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation, and merged the team with Oculus.

Nascent Objects, a Bay Area startup, developed a modular hardware platform and software that used 3D printing to let developers move from concept to product far faster than traditional methods. Facebook acquired it in September 2016 and folded the team into its Building 8 hardware lab.

InfiniLED, a Cork, Ireland spin-out of the Tyndall National Institute, developed microLED display technology that produced brighter displays at a fraction of the power of LCD or OLED. Oculus acquired it in October 2016 and established a research office in Cork.

CrowdTangle, founded in 2011, built a widely used social-media analytics platform that helped publishers discover, measure and track how content spreads across social networks. Facebook acquired it in November 2016 and later made the tool free to thousands of newsrooms and partners.

FacioMetrics was a Carnegie Mellon University spin-out that built machine-learning and computer-vision software (including its IntraFace app) for real-time facial image and expression analysis. Facebook acquired it in November 2016 to help power camera effects.

Zurich Eye was a Swiss computer-vision team, drawn from ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich via the Wyss Zurich accelerator, focused on SLAM and vision-based autonomous navigation. In late 2016 the team became the core of a new Oculus engineering office in Zurich.

Dreambit was a facial-image search engine developed by University of Washington researcher Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman that could face-swap a person into different appearances, hairstyles, eras and age progressions. Facebook acquired the technology and its creator around 2016.

Ozlo built a conversational AI assistant that could understand text-based questions and provide nuanced answers beyond simple yes/no responses. Facebook acquired the roughly 30-person team in July 2017 and moved them into its Messenger group.

Fayteq AG, based in Erfurt, Germany, built computer-vision software (sold as plugins for tools like Adobe After Effects) that could add or remove objects from existing video using motion tracking. Facebook confirmed the acquisition in August 2017.

tbh ('to be honest') was a fast-growing anonymous polling app for teens that let users answer kind-hearted, multiple-choice questions about friends. Facebook acquired the app and its founders in October 2017 and ran it as a standalone product before shutting it down in 2018.

Confirm.io, founded in 2015, offered an API to authenticate government-issued IDs such as driver's licenses using forensics, mobile biometrics and facial recognition. Facebook acquired the Boston-based startup in January 2018 and wound down its standalone service.

Bloomsbury AI was a London-based natural-language-understanding startup founded in 2015 whose flagship technology, Cape, could read documents and answer questions about their contents. Facebook acquired the team to strengthen its machine-learning and natural-language research capabilities in London.

Redkix was an Israel-based enterprise communication startup, founded in 2014, that built a platform combining email with real-time team messaging in a single collaboration inbox. Facebook acquired the company and folded its team and technology into Workplace by Facebook, its business collaboration product.

Vidpresso was a Utah-based startup, founded in 2012, that helped broadcasters and publishers make online and live video more interactive with on-screen graphics, audience polling, comments and social-media integration. Facebook acquired the seven-person team and its technology, with the group joining Facebook's video efforts.

Chainspace was a UK-based blockchain research startup building a sharded smart-contract platform aimed at improving the scalability and privacy of distributed ledgers, spun out of academic work at University College London. Facebook hired most of the research team to join its emerging blockchain group in what was reported as an acqui-hire rather than a technology purchase.

GrokStyle was a San Francisco-based startup, spun out of Cornell research, whose computer-vision technology let shoppers photograph an object such as furniture and instantly find matching or similar products to buy. Facebook acquired the company's team and technology, after which GrokStyle wound down its own operations.

Servicefriend was an Israel-based startup, founded in 2015, that built 'hybrid' customer-service chatbots blending automation with human agents to handle conversations over messaging channels such as Messenger and WhatsApp. Facebook acquired the company, with its team joining the Calibra digital-wallet group.

Packagd was a small US-based startup, founded by former Kleiner Perkins partner Eric Feng, that built a video-based shopping product reimagining home-shopping and unboxing formats for the on-demand era. Facebook quietly acquired the team, which began working on live-shopping features for Facebook Marketplace.

Atlas ML (trading name of Deeptide Ltd.) was the UK-based company behind Papers with Code, a free and open resource linking machine-learning research papers with their code and benchmark leaderboards. Facebook AI acquired the company, with the founders announcing that Papers with Code would join Facebook AI while remaining free and open.

Papers with Code will remain a neutral, open and free resource.Robert Stojnic and Ross Taylor — Papers with Code co-founders

PlayGiga was a Madrid-based cloud-gaming startup, founded in 2013, that ran cloud game-streaming services and offered white-label cloud-gaming technology to telecom operators in markets including Spain, Italy, Argentina and Chile. Facebook acquired the company to build out its cloud-gaming expertise.

Sanzaru Games was a US-based veteran game studio, best known for the VR title Asgard's Wrath and other Oculus games, that Facebook acquired to join Oculus Studios. The studio continued operating from its offices in the U.S. and Canada while building original VR content.

Sanzaru is joining Facebook to help us pursue a future of rich, immersive, and original VR game content.Mike Verdu — Director of Content, Facebook

Scape Technologies was a London-based computer-vision startup, founded in 2017, that built a 'Visual Positioning Service' matching camera imagery and video to 3D maps to determine a device's location with far greater precision than GPS. Facebook acquired the company for its visual-positioning and mapping technology.

Mapillary was a Sweden-based startup that built a crowdsourced platform of street-level imagery, using computer vision to extract map data from photos contributed by a global community and organizations. Facebook acquired the company to advance its open-mapping efforts, with Mapillary continuing its support of OpenStreetMap.

By merging our efforts, we will further improve the ways that people and machines can work with both aerial and street-level imagery to produce map data.Jan Erik Solem — CEO and co-founder, Mapillary

Ready at Dawn was a US-based game studio best known for the acclaimed VR Lone Echo and Echo Arena franchise on the Oculus platform. Facebook acquired the studio to join Oculus Studios, where it continued to operate independently from its offices in Irvine, California, and Portland, Oregon.

Ready At Dawn is joining Facebook—and the future of groundbreaking content in VR has never looked brighter.Mike Verdu — VP of AR/VR Content, Facebook

Lemnis Technologies was a Singapore-based startup, incorporated in 2017, developing varifocal display technology (branded Verifocal) that combined hardware and software to enable variable focal depth in VR headsets and address the vergence-accommodation conflict. Facebook absorbed the team in a reported acqui-hire to advance its VR display research.

Downpour Interactive was a US-based studio founded by Dante Buckley that created Onward, a popular multiplayer VR military shooter available on Oculus Rift, Quest and Steam. Facebook acquired the studio to join Oculus Studios while continuing to develop and support Onward.

We're eager to support Dante and Downpour Interactive in growing Onward as one of the foremost multiplayer VR games.Mike Verdu — VP, AR/VR Content, Facebook

Unit 2 Games is a UK-based studio behind Crayta, a collaborative, no-code game-creation platform built on Unreal Engine that lets people build and share games together in the browser and cloud. Facebook acquired the studio to fold Crayta's creation toolset into Facebook Gaming's cloud platform.

BigBox VR is a US-based virtual-reality studio best known for POPULATION: ONE, a social VR battle-royale shooter that became one of the top-performing titles on the Oculus platform. The entire BigBox VR team joined Oculus Studios following the acquisition.

Today, I'm honored to share that BigBox VR is joining Facebook.Mike Verdu — VP of Content, Facebook Reality Labs

AI.Reverie is a New York-based startup whose platform generates synthetic training data and annotations used to build computer-vision and AI models. Meta absorbed the company and its team into its Reality Labs division.

Twisted Pixel is a US-based game studio (The Gunstringer, Wilson's Heart, Path of the Warrior) that had already built VR titles for Oculus. Meta announced at Connect 2022 that the team had joined Oculus Studios.

Presize is a Munich-based startup offering AI body-measurement and virtual sizing technology that uses a smartphone camera to scan a shopper's body and recommend the right fashion fit. Meta acquired the company to bring virtual sizing and try-on capabilities to its commerce and AR experiences.

Lofelt is a Berlin-based haptics startup that developed software tools to convert audio into high-quality haptic feedback for apps and devices. Its team joined Meta following the acquisition.

Armature Studio is a US-based (Austin) game developer founded by former Metroid Prime/Retro Studios directors, known for ReCore and the Meta Quest 2 port of Resident Evil 4. Meta announced at Connect 2022 that the studio had joined Oculus Studios.

Camouflaj is a US-based (Seattle-area) game studio behind Marvel's Iron Man VR and, later, Batman: Arkham Shadow. Meta announced at Connect 2022 that the team had joined Oculus Studios.

Luxexcel is a Netherlands-based company that 3D-prints prescription and smart lenses, including the ability to embed technology directly into a lens. Meta had previously worked with Luxexcel on Project Aria before acquiring it.

PlayAI is a US-based voice-AI startup (founded by Mahmoud Felfel and Hammad Syed) known for natural, human-like text-to-speech and a multi-turn voice model for contextual, emotionally nuanced dialogue. Meta confirmed the acquisition, with the entire PlayAI team joining the company.

WaveForms AI is a US-based audio-AI startup, co-founded by former OpenAI researcher Alexis Conneau, building audio large language models designed to interpret and respond to emotional cues in real time. Its founders and team joined Meta's Superintelligence Labs.

Rivos is a Santa Clara-based chip startup designing AI processors based on the open-source RISC-V architecture, including a CUDA-compatible RISC-V design taped out at TSMC. Meta acquired the company (reportedly in a deal valued around $2 billion, though terms were not officially disclosed) to accelerate its custom silicon program.

Limitless is a US-based AI-wearables startup behind the Pendant, a $99 clip-on device that records what a user says or hears and turns it into transcripts and a searchable personal memory. Meta acquired the company and halted sales of the original Pendant to new customers while supporting existing users.

Manus is a Singapore-based developer of general-purpose AI agents (founded in China before relocating) whose agent can autonomously perform tasks like market research, coding, and data analysis. Meta acquired the company (reportedly valued at over $2 billion, though terms were not officially disclosed), stating there would be no continuing Chinese ownership interests and that operations in China would be discontinued.

Moltbook is a US-based, Reddit-like social network built for AI agents (created by Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr) where autonomous agents communicate with one another. Meta acquired the platform, bringing its creators into Meta Superintelligence Labs.

Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI) is a US-based startup building AI models that enable robots to understand, predict, and adapt to human behavior in complex, dynamic environments, pursuing 'physical AGI.' Meta closed the acquisition, bringing over ARI's entire staff, including co-founders Lerrel Pinto and Xiaolong Wang, into Meta Superintelligence Labs.

Within is the developer of Supernatural, a subscription VR fitness app. Meta agreed to acquire it in 2021 to expand VR into fitness and everyday health use cases. The US Federal Trade Commission sued in July 2022 to block the deal on antitrust grounds, but after a federal court declined to grant a preliminary injunction the FTC dropped its challenge, and Meta completed the acquisition in February 2023. Deal terms were not officially disclosed.

GIPHY is a leading library and search engine for GIFs and stickers used to make conversations more expressive. Facebook acquired it into the Instagram team to integrate its GIF library across Instagram and other apps; at the time about half of GIPHY's traffic already came from Facebook's family of apps. The deal was later unwound: the UK Competition and Markets Authority ordered Meta to divest GIPHY, and Meta sold it to Shutterstock in 2023. Deal terms were not officially disclosed.

WhatsApp is a cross-platform mobile messaging service that had more than 450 million monthly users at announcement and was adding over a million new users a day. Facebook acquired it to expand its mobile messaging footprint and advance its goal of connecting more of the world. WhatsApp continued to operate independently and retain its brand, and co-founder Jan Koum joined Facebook's board.

WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable.Mark Zuckerberg — Founder and CEO, Facebook

WhatsApp's extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide.Jan Koum — Co-founder and CEO, WhatsApp

Oculus VR is a pioneer in immersive virtual reality technology and had already taken more than 75,000 development-kit orders for its headset ahead of the deal. Facebook acquired it to move beyond mobile into what it saw as the next computing platform, extending VR from gaming into communication, media, and education. The deal seeded what became Facebook Reality Labs.

Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.Mark Zuckerberg — Founder and CEO, Facebook

Atlas is a campaign-management and measurement suite for marketers and agencies that Facebook acquired from Microsoft. Facebook took it on to help advertisers understand and coordinate campaigns across channels and to strengthen ad measurement. The transaction closed on April 26, 2013 after standard regulatory review. Deal terms were not disclosed by Facebook.

Instagram is a mobile photo-sharing service that, at the time of the deal, had over 100 million registered users. Facebook acquired it to strengthen its photo-sharing products and deepen mobile engagement, while letting the Instagram team continue to operate and grow the app. The acquisition was Facebook's largest to that point and closed shortly after its May 2012 IPO.

I'm excited to share the news that we've agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.Mark Zuckerberg — Founder and CEO, Facebook