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Meta buys VR fitness service Supernatural

During Meta's Connect conference, Mark Zuckerberg highlighted fitness as one of the use cases for the company's expansion into the metaverse.

Supernatural promotional image

Supernatural uses Meta's Quest headset for workouts in VR.

Image: Supernatural

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has acquired VR fitness subscription service Supernatural, the fitness startup announced Friday afternoon. Financial details of the deal weren't immediately available.

The acquisition will allow Supernatural to "have more resources to expand," Supernatural CEO Chris Milk wrote in a note to the company's subscribers. Milk will be joining Meta as part of the acquisition, and his entire staff got offers to join the company as well.

Supernatural has been one of the first startups to use VR for fitness, effectively replicating the Peloton model of at-home workouts with a headset. "Our larger hope is that we can bring in a whole new type of audience into virtual reality that might not have been interested in it for the use case it has been promoted for thus far," Milk told Protocol last year.

During Meta's Connect conference this week, Mark Zuckerberg highlighted fitness as one of the use cases for the company's expansion into the metaverse. Meta also announced that it would launch workout accessories for users of its Quest VR headset next year.

Update: This story was updated to include more information about the acquisition.

 Janko Roettgers

Janko Roettgers (Twitter, Mastodon) used to be a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.

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