Viewpoints: February 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 is special as we're celebrating International Women's Day by profiling the female founders building the metaverse, and announcing our second edition of the DVRSTY Office Hours. Read on for more!

This week, we will be covering:

• FOV News: Our update on DVRSTY

• Portfolio news: Our investment into Aino.ar

• Funding and acquistions

• Data points

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

FOV News: Our update on DVRSTY

On International Women's Day, it's worth reflecting on how far we need to go, and the progress we have made. Sifted reported that only 13% of web3 founding teams include females, a stark statistic in such a young industry. We reflected on how this can reflect our work in the Metaverse and immersive technologies, which is similarly young and with vibrant talent. We have a duty to strive for gender balance across our work and activities.

In light of this, we started the community-driven DVRSTY initiative, along with partners including WiiT (Women In Immersive Tech), XRDI, AWE and a number of fellow investors and operators. Launched last year, we aim to increase our pipeline of more diverse founders, supporting them from the beginning of their journey. As part of this, we are delighted to announce the next round of our DVRSTY initiative, DVRSTY #2 Office Hours, which aims to support female founders in creating companies within the Metaverse and Web3. The initiative will connect founders with investors and industry experts who will provide feedback, advice and guidance to help them navigate the complexities of the Metaverse. The initiative is open to diverse women founders in Europe currently starting their company or raising their first capital. You can read more about it in this blog post and apply here. Applications are open until April 4, 2023, and the event will take place on April 26, 2023. Additionally, the initiative will offer a virtual networking event, a private investor readiness workshop, a free pass to AWE USA, and an investor dinner. (Speaking of AWE USA, we have a 20% off discount if you wish to come, outside of the initiative: FOVV23D).

Help us spread the word to extend support to even more founders!

Portfolio news: Our investment into Aino.ar

We are also happy to introduce Aino.ar to the FOV family. Aino.ar is a 3D design platform to showcase your products, improving the e-commerce of companies via immersive technologies. Our activity in the Nordic region continues with supporting a strong company with a bright vision, as the company seeks to improve e-commerce with their immersive tech solution. The founders (ex-Supercell & Smartly) impressed us with their vision, and we look forward to working with them through their journey. You can read more about the investment, alongside our thoughts on 3D and retail/ecommerce, right here.

Other updates:

• Move.ai launched on Apple's app store. With just a couple of iPhones, you can capture motion data from anyone, in any location, bringing studio-quality mocap to the palm of your hand.

• Ambient topped Hacker News by announcing version 0.1 of their open-source multiplayer game runtime built with Rust.

• RLTY, after months of hard work, officially launched their no-code virtual event builder in late February.

• Ready Player Me launched its Labs feature. The tool allows creatives to use AI-assisted features to tailor their looks.

Want to see our investments? Check out our full portfolio here.

Funding and acquisitions

What else has been happening besides our investment in Aino.ar? Content saw a surge in interest throughout the month. Hexa 3D, which specialises in volumetric assets, raised $20.5m in funding. Mawari raised $6.5m to improve 3D content delivery as well.

Metaverse platforms saw some interest, too. Avalon raised $13m to strive and build an interoperable metaverse. Spheroid Universe saw $25m as well, to fuel its growth ambitions. Spatial Labs saw $10m in funding as well, with a focus on digital fashion. Other miscellaneous investments include Cydar, an AR medical startup that received $11.5m in funding. Quell, an immersive fitness company, saw $10m in funding.

Finally, Pimax - a major VR hardware company - saw $30m in additional funding just as the month ended. While Meta, Pico and HTC continue to grapple in an increasingly contested market, Pimax focuses on its core strengths of enterprise uses and adoption.

Data points

• 30 awesome females: the number listed in our blog post celebrating the female founders in Europe that are building the Metaverse.

• 20 million: The number of Quest headsets sold so far. It is unclear what the divisions are between the Meta Quest 1, 2, and Pro.

• $615bn: The value of the metaverse by 2030, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

That’s all for now. Have a great March, 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 (FOV Ventures)

http://fov.ventures