It’s part of Silicon Valley lore that when Facebook bought Oculus in 2014, it paid $2 billion for wunderkind Palmer Luckey’s darling of the VR world.
Zuck on Oculus deal: "we bought the company for about 2b, had additional 700mm in retention for key folks, 300 mm earnout for milestones"
— ಠ_ಠ (@MikeIsaac) January 17, 2017
But according to testimony from Mark Zuckerberg this morning in Oculus’s trial defending itself against claims that much of its core technology was stolen from Zenimax, the Facebook CEO said the price was actually a lot more. That’s because, as The New York Times‘s Mike Isaac tweeted, Zuck said that in addition to the $2 billion, Facebook set aside $700 million for “retention for key folks,” as well as another $300 million for “earnout for milestones.” He didn’t say, however, if those milestones had been met.