Facebook, or should we say, “The Facebook,” was launched by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004. Initially created solely for college students attending specific schools, it reached one million users in just ten short months after its inception. Eighteen years later, in 2022, Facebook (now named Meta) has nearly 2.9 billion monthly users! This number doesn’t even include Facebook’s acquisitions like WhatsApp and Instagram (to name a few).
During this wave of extreme growth, Mark Zuckerberg has acquired 94 companies to date. Facebook’s largest acquisition has been WhatsApp Messenger, which they purchased for $19 billion in February 2015. Other notable acquisitions include Instagram (purchased for $1 billion in April 2012) and Oculus Virtual Reality (purchased for $2 billion in March 2014).
Some of Facebook’s smaller purchases include the domain fb.com, which it bought for $8.5 million in November 2010, and the hosting and sharing platform Drop.io, which it purchased for $10 million in October 2010. Just a few million dollars each, which is no big deal for Facebook, whose IPO started out at $38 per share (in May 2012), and sits at roughly $93 per share in mid/late-August 2015.
However, in January 2018, Facebook acquired confirmo.io, a Government-issued ID verification platform based in Boston, USA and during July purchased Bloomsbury AI($30,000,000) and RedKix($100,000,000). The year 2019 saw just two purchases, Chainspace, and GROKSTYLE, during February. CTRL-Labs, with a value rumored to be between 500 Million and a Billion, Giphy for 400 Million, and Kustomer for 1 Billion Dollars are some of the big-ticket purchases made by Facebook between September 2019 and November 2020.
2021 saw Facebook acquiring Downpour Interactive, Unit 2 Games, BigBox VR, AI.Reverie and Within. Facebook has not disclosed the cost at which these acquisitions were done.
Curious to see the companies owned by Facebook till 2021?
Let’s dive into the infographics!
This infographic contains the complete list of companies acquired by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg from August 2005 till date.
We will periodically be updating this as Facebook continues to make new acquisitions. We hope you enjoy it!
A big thanks to the TechWyse Team, who helped to design and manage this infographic with all the acquisitions by Facebook made until 2022. Well done, guys!
You may have noticed on the Facebook Acquisitions Infographic that Facebook has made several big and small acquisitions. For some companies, the cost of acquisition is not yet disclosed.
Let’s look at the top 5 Facebook Acquisitions and highlight the intention behind buying these companies. Now when Facebook changed its parent company name to Meta – we realize why Facebook acquired Oculus VR in 2014.
Founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2010, Instagram’s primary focus was to feature photographs, especially those taken on Apple mobile devices. Within months of its launch, Instagram saw a rapid rise in user base, and they began luring a ton of investors. According to reports, Twitter wanted to acquire Instagram and made a formal offer of around $500 million in stock, but Systrom refused to accept the offer. Sensing the growing popularity of this American photo and video sharing social networking service, in April 2012, Facebook Inc. acquired Instagram for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock.
When Facebook acquired Instagram, they opted to build and grow the Instagram app independently from the leading Facebook platform.
Today, with around one billion monthly active users, Instagram belongs to the most widespread social network and is the second most-downloaded app globally.
Brian Acton and Jan Koum launched WhatsApp in 2009 after leaving their job at Yahoo!.
WhatsApp is Facebook’s most important acquisition, and it is over 20 times larger than its Instagram acquisition, making quite the splash in 2012. Why did Facebook acquire WhatsApp for such a whopping amount? The answer is Whatsapp’s user growth. So, Facebook noticed both vulnerability and opportunity in WhatsApp.
In February 2014, Facebook acquired Whatsapp for $19 billion and left everyone wondering.
Today with 2 billion monthly active users, Experts estimate that WhatsApp generated between $5 and $10 billion for Facebook in 2020.
If you are into gaming, you must be familiar with virtual reality hardware and software company – Oculus VR. This virtual reality gaming company Oculus VR makes virtual reality headsets. One of the significant and earlier successes of Oculus was the VR headset Oculus Rift, which wowed the industry.
The company was founded in July 2012 by Palmer Luckey, Brendan Iribe, Michael Antonov, and Nate Mitchell in Irvine, California.
Facebook acquired Oculus for a jaw-dropping $2 billion in 2014.
Meta’s purchase of Oculus VR gave it an instant presence in the virtual reality market.
Onavo was an Israeli mobile web analytics company.
Guy Rosen and Roi Tiger established Onavo in 2010. In October 2013, Onavo was acquired by Facebook; it is believed that Facebook planned to use Onavo’s analytics platform to monitor competitors. This allowed Facebook to make various business decisions, including its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp.
Facebook bought Onavo in 2013 for about $120 million.
Beluga is a famous group messaging service that Facebook acquired when it was only eight months old. Founded in July of 2010, Beluga’s technology caught Facebook’s attention.
Within a year of acquiring it, Facebook decided to shut down the Beluga mobile messaging application to create a comparable, native service called Facebook Messenger that’s based in part on the Beluga technology.
What companies are owned by Facebook? What did Facebook pay to acquire Whatsapp, Oculus VR, Giphy, etc.? When did Facebook buy Instagram?
These are some of the questions that you may have in mind when thinking about Facebook Acquisitions.
We have listed down all companies with the year and cost of acquiring them. Facebook has not disclosed the cost for which they acquired many of these companies.
Facebook needs no introduction, neither does Mark Zuckerberg. However, if you are reading this blog, you may be keen to learn exciting facts about him, companies owned by Mark Zuckerberg, his lifestyle, his family, etc.
Inspired?? People always look up to entrepreneurs who have attained success early in their lives. From their everyday schedules to their life mantras, it is always mesmerizing to understand their journey to success.
The man who took Social Networking to the Next Level at a very young age is an inspiration to many young people who desire to own a successful businesses.
Mark’s Instagram Embedded Codeins
Co-founder and CEO of Facebook (with a net worth of $107B) Mark Zuckerberg, is a self-made man who founded Facebook in 2004.
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, U.S. His mother Karen practiced as a Psychiatrist and his father Edward Zuckerberg was a dentist. He and his three sisters (Arielle, Randi, and Donna) were raised in a Reformed Jewish household in Dobbs Ferry, New York. His great-grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Austria, Germany, and Poland.
Mark Zuckerberg has been married to his wife Priscilla Chan since 2012. Priscilla Chan is an American philanthropist and a former pediatrician. They have two daughters – Maxima and August.
Today Marc Z owns 94 companies including WhatsApp and Instagram to name a few, and is an inspiration to many.
1. At the age of 12, Zuckerberg created an instant messaging program that he called ZuckNet to help his father know when patients arrived. A brilliant child!!
2. Mark Zuckerberg IQ is estimated at 152, which is considered as a genius and in the top 0.1% of the population in the world.
3. While Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan are now parents and major philanthropists, they met each other for the first time at a party while waiting in line for the bathroom.
4. Why does he wear the same gray t-shirt every day? – In an interview, he said he believes that he needs to spend his energy on matters that help the community and not on things – choosing which shirt to wear. However, his signature T-shirt costs $300 to $400.
5. Did you know the reason Facebook is blue is because Zuckerberg is colorblind? Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind, which means the color he can see the best is blue.
1. Al Pacino was the first face on Facebook.
Wondering who Al Pacino is?
Oscar-winning actor Al Pacino acted in films like ‘The Godfather,’ ‘Dog Day Afternoon,’ ‘Dick Tracy’ and ‘Scent of a Woman’.
3. Facebook’s user base grows at a rate of 8 people per second.
4. Cristiano Ronaldo is the most followed person on Facebook.
5. Facebook is not in China, they have blocked Facebook since 2009.
6. Facebook has an upside-down English option for its users in its language options. Try this out today!!
1. Did you know when Mark launched Facebook, it was called Facemash?
Zuckerberg started Facemash as a platform where the Havard students could compare faces and pick “who’s hotter.”
Not surprisingly, this platform didn’t impress Harvard’s administrators.
2. Facebook is the third most popular site globally, next only to Google and YouTube.
3. Only half of Facebook users speak English!!
But Facebook cares, and to make it convenient for non-English speakers, Facebook has over 100 languages to choose from.
4. 85% of the Facebook videos are watched with NO SOUND ON!
This can be a tip for marketers and content creators to always have subtitles for their videos.
5. The average number of friends users have in their Facebook account is 338.
So don’t get sad seeing a lot of influencers having thousands of friends on Facebook and wondering why you don’t have that much; many like you have fewer friends.
Facebook made 5 acquisitions in the year 2021, hence the total number of companies owned by Facebook counts to 94 by 2021.
Here is the list of companies acquired by Facebook in 2021:
Industry: Video game developer
Website: https://www.downpourinteractive.com/
Location: USA, San Francisco, California
Industry: Facebook Gaming
Website: https://unit2games.com/
Location: UK, Leamington Spa
Industry: VR Game
Website: https://www.bigboxvr.com/
Location: USA, Seattle, Washington
Industry: Artificial Intelligence
Website: https://aireverie.com/ (Page may be not found-404 Error)
Location: USA, New York, NY, New York
Industry: Virtual Reality
Website: https://www.with.in/
Location: USA, Los Angeles, California
Facebook Inc. now known as Meta owns 94 companies. The major Facebook acquisitions are Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus VR.
Facebook has a habit of acquiring everything that can be a threat to them in the future. Instagram which is a very popular photo and video-sharing social networking platform was launched in 2010 and was a good threat to Facebook. This big Facebook acquisition happened on 9th April 2012 for 1 Billion.
According to app tracker App Annie – the most downloaded apps are owned by Facebook – Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram are the most downloaded apps.
If you want a complete list of all the companies owned by Facebook, please refer to the Facebook Acquisitions 2021 infographics shared by Techwyse in this blog above.
Co-founder and CEO of Facebook (with a net worth of $107B) Mark Zuckerberg, is a self-made man who founded Facebook in 2004. Mark Zuckerberg owns 94 companies including WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus VR, etc.
Mark owns 94 companies and if you want to see the entire list, please check out the Facebook acquisitions 2021 shared by Techwyse in this blog above.
Mark Zuckerberg-Class A shares and Class B shares of 392,71 million — 11,92 million (53.3 percent voting power)
Jan Koum – Class A shares of 14.2 million
Saverin Eduardo – Class A shares 6.1 million and Class B shares 47.2 million
Dustin Moscow — Class B shares of 48.9 million
Sheryl Sandberg — 1.5 million Class A and Class B shares
Facebook purchased WhatsApp in February 2014 for an approximate total of $16 billion. Facebook saw both vulnerability and opportunity in WhatsApp and acquired it for a whopping $19B in 2014.
Facebook inc was founded in 2004 and since then 94 Facebook Acquisitions have taken place.
On 28th Oct 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is rebranding itself under a new name: Meta.
The Facebook CEO emphasized, “Right now our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything we’re doing today, let alone in the future”
Facebook (the parent company) has changed its name to Meta, in reference to the metaverse, which combines social media with virtual and augmented reality — so Facebook focuses on metaverse for their future; hence the name change is required. Otherwise, they will represent themselves only as a social media platform, but they are evolving into something beyond social media platforms.
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on
Metaverse is the future, and facebook will outgrow google.
on
Wow, impressive article. Well researched too! I had no idea about all of the companies FB acquired. I wonder how many of them actually turn a profit too. I also didn’t know they own Giphy.
on
[…] Facebook have been incredibly successful with this strategy. In 15 years, between 2005 and 2020, Facebook acquired a total of 85 tech companies, with more than $23 billion in purchases in its shopping cart, not including dozens of undisclosed […]
on
Thanks for sharing the informative blog. Really it helpful.
on
Thanks for sharing the informative blog. Really it helpful.
on
Thanks for sharing the informative blog. Really it helpful.
on
Thanks for sharing the informative blog. Really it helpful.
on
Thanks for publishing the blog. Keep sharing.
on
Facebook and amazon are tough competitors of Google
on
“66 Facebook Acquisitions – The Complete List (2018)! [INFOGRAPHIC] ” Thank you for sharing this use full post on this topic.this is very nice post
on
Google better watch out. The rate at which Facebook is developing is really high. I have to cross my fingers and wait till the results of its upgrading are complete.
on
They’ve made some REALLY strange acquisitions! A sofa company from the Netherlands? Why?! But this is a great infographic!!
on
Sofa doesn’t sell sofas… LOL it’s a Software Design company!
on
Facebook will be give tough competition to Google
on
I think the most important acquistions Facebook made is FB.com, face recognition companies, WhatsApp, Instagram & Snapchat. They made Facebook immediately much prominent in user’s Internet communication life. I mean, they are there doesn’t matter you share a photo via Facebook or Instagram, and IM speaking, Facebook is behind three IM platforms, three platforms that are popular. It’s a big deal, really.
However, I think these acquisitions matters for the short term, perhaps mid term, and help Facebook have a growing user base. But the other acquisitions they made is probably more for the long term, and I’m thinking about Oculus VR. Basically, they diversify as they grow in order to not fall when Facebook the website will fall.