Facebook today announced that it will acquire neural interface startup CTRL-Labs, a company that makes a wristband capable of transmitting electrical signals from the brain into computer input.
The deal, which Bloomberg reports is worth somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion, is the most substantial acquisition Facebook has made in the last half decade, since it paid $2 billion to acquire virtual reality company Oculus VR in 2014.
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Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, the head of AR and VR at Facebook, made the announcement on his personal Facebook page this evening. Bosworth says CTRL-Labs, which was co-founded by Internet Explorer creator and neuroscientist Thomas Reardon, “will be joining our Facebook Reality Labs team where we hope to build this kind of technology, at scale, and get it into consumer products faster.”
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Just last week, news broke that Facebook is designing two different models of AR glasses, one like Snap Spectacles and another said to be a standalone Google Glass-style device, that are prime candidates for the kind of interface tech CTRL-Labs has developed.