Laura Hamilton, editor at CED magazine.

While widespread augmented/virtual reality is considered to still be in its initial phases, early stage VCs and other companies actually invested a record $2 billion into AR/VR startups in the last 12 months, according to Digi-Capital.

VR investments and buyouts have received a lot of trade press play, including on these pages. Take for example, VR company Spaces, which announced it raised $3 million in initial funding led by Comcast Ventures, or Facebook’s recent acquisition of Two Big Ears, an immersive and interactive audio technology company.

“AR/VR M&A has started to kick off at scale, with major corporates buying their way towards leapfrogging the competition. The last 12 months to Q2 2016 saw $849 million of AR/VR acquisitions, with over half a billion dollars of AR/VR M&A in the second quarter alone. The biggest deals were in AR/VR tech, video and solutions/services, as well as advertising/marketing and games,” Digi-Capital reports in a blog.

AR/VR companies look like they’ll continue to raise significant rounds and be bought up by corporate acquisitions, the blog states.

“The runaway success of Pokémon Go reinforces what we’ve been saying since the start of last year. VR could be big. AR could be bigger,” Digi-Captial notes.

For more details see the Digi-Capital original post here.