Facebook Inc. agreed to buy New York-based technology startup, CTRL-Labs Corp., for a price ranging between $500 million and $1 billion, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The deal is expected to complement Facebook's strategy of diving deeper into augmented reality technology.
Four-year-old CTRL-Labs is reportedly developing software to allow individuals to control a digital avatar using only their thoughts. It also manufactures a wristband that measures its users' neuron activity to identify the movement they are thinking about.
Following the completion of the purchase, CTRL-Labs employees will join Facebook's Reality Labs team which works on augmented reality and virtual reality products, the report said.
CTRL-Labs has Google LLC's GV, Amazon Alexa Fund, Founders Fund and Spark Capital among its list of backers.
For Facebook, the deal comes at a time it is facing two separate antitrust investigations in the U.S., which can heighten scrutiny on its decision to buy CTRL-Labs, the Bloomberg report said.
