Viewpoints: April 2023 wrap-up

Welcome to this month’s curated digest of viewpoints, news and investment activity covering the Metaverse, XR and Spatial Computing - brought to you by FOV Ventures. This month we are looking back on the DVRSTY #Office Hours, several events, and covering some great moves from our portfolio companies. We will also be looking at:

• FOV News

• Portfolio News

• Funding and acquisitions

• Data points

Dave Haynes, Petri Rajahalme and Sointu Karjalainen (FOV Ventures)

FOV News: Celebrating DVRSTY #2 and FOV Birthday Drinks in Helsinki

FOV's Birthday Party at Allas Sea Pool in Helsinki was an absolute blast! It was fantastic to see founders, co-investors, and friends mingling and celebrating together. Check out some memorable snapshots here: Some pics here.

DVRSTY Office Hours #2 was a roaring success, connecting 9 outstanding diverse founders with VCs and mentors. Let's celebrate the achievements of these amazing finalists (see the list of 9 below)! The journey continues with investor dinners, AWE USA, and dedicated Discord chats, ensuring even more opportunities to connect and thrive!

Nak3d, altr, Imvizar, Dottyland, SensiVR.Health, Sophia Tech, VBuddies, Arrival.Space and Atopia.

On the theme of diversity, FOV Ventures is also supporting a new initiative launched by Sony Music and Digital Catapult. The FutureScope Black Founders Programme is a 16-week accelerator targeted at pre-seed or seed stage, Black-founded companies creating innovative products and services in the areas of Music, Entertainment, Gaming and the Metaverse.

This month you can catch the FOV team at several events across the globe. Petri Rajahalme joins Konvoy’s Taylor Hurst & The VR Fund’s Tipatat Chennavasin at AWE this June for an XR & Metaverse investment panel. Petri will also be speaking at the inaugural Global XR Summit in Athens followed by a panel at the Metaverse Leaders Summit. Meanwhile, Sointu takes the stage at Arctic15 on June 1-2, participating in a must-see VC panel discussion. Mark your calendars and come meet our amazing team!

Portfolio news:

Here are some updates from our FOV portfolio:

• Move.ai launched its real-time mo-cap solution at NAB with its partner Disguise, and won the startup category at Laval Virtual.

• Temple announced their $2.5m raise led by Venrex, with participation from FOV Ventures.

• GEEIQ spoke to The Times about 'Luxury In The Metaverse.’

• Virtex sat down with Forbes to talk all things e-sports, just after launching the trailer for their upcoming Counterstrike integration.

Funding and acquisitions

As the April showers turn towards the May warmth, infrastructure companies saw some time in the sun. MetaGravity, which focuses on making the infrastructure for the metaverse, raised $9.5m in funding, while XRSPACE raised $25m to grow its own metaverse platform.

Enterprise-level companies saw a surge in interest, too. Mytaverse, which makes its own enterprise-level metaverse platform, raised $7.6m, while Swansea University received £900k to build out its VR training capabilities. If you're looking to cool yourself in the Spring rays, FLAIM is a firefighting VR training company that raised $6.7m in funding. Or if you need a fix, SentiAR raised $8.5m to launch new partnerships for its medical procedures. And creeping up from the back, Katmai left stealth with $22m in funding, wanting to bring the metaverse to the office.

Hardware saw some love, too. SenseGlove raised €3.3m to grow its haptic globe business, while Mojo Vision raised $22.4m to grow its AR contact lens work. But other than that, more software-based companies saw more attention in April. Finally, we saw AI integrate further into our work - Social Future, an AI-driven social metaverse company, raised $6m in funding.

Data points

• €1.8m: The amount of capital raised by Finnish start-ups in 2022, a new record. More on the big year.

• 7,000: Number of people that Yuga Labs simultaneously hosted in a trial run of its metaverse. More details on its venture.

• $72bn: Global market size for the metaverse in healthcare by 2030. More details on the study.

That’s all for now. Have a great spring, and as always, please do send us your feedback, comments, or any interesting new startups you know of in this space.

Dave Haynes, Petri Rajahalme and Sointu Karjalainen (FOV Ventures)

http://fov.ventures