San Antonio VR Headset Maker Merge Lands New Funding, Expands Sales

San Antonio — [Updated 1 p.m. See below.] Virtual reality headset maker Merge Labs has raised $10.1 million in new equity funding, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company, which sells virtual reality headsets marketed as Merge VR Goggles for $79, had previously raised about $3 million in seed funding. Merge listed its co-founders and top executives, Franklin Lyons and Andrew Trickett, as two of its board members in the SEC filing, along with former Rackspace (NYSE: [[ticker:RAX]]) President Lew Moorman as a third member.

The funding comes from investors across gaming, software, hardware, and retail verticals, according to marketing coordinator Taryn Saavedra, who declined to provide further detail on the funding. Merge didn’t say how it plans to spend the money in the filing. [Comment from company added.]

Merge has been expanding its sales presence globally, having recently signed a deal to put its VR goggles in 250 GameStop (NYSE: [[ticker:GME]]) stores. Target has also started carrying its product, Merge announced yesterday.

In addition to developing more retail relationships, Merge has also started working on other devices. Trickett told Xconomy in March about the company’s development of a VR controller, which will have motion-sensing capability like a Nintendo Wii.

Author: David Holley

David is the national correspondent at Xconomy. He has spent most of his career covering business of every kind, from breweries in Oregon to investment banks in New York. A native of the Pacific Northwest, David started his career reporting at weekly and daily newspapers, covering murder trials, city council meetings, the expanding startup tech industry in the region, and everything between. He left the West Coast to pursue business journalism in New York, first writing about biotech and then private equity at The Deal. After a stint at Bloomberg News writing about high-yield bonds and leveraged loans, David relocated from New York to Austin, TX. He graduated from Portland State University.