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. We're always on the lookout for fellow investors and founders, so if you find the digest useful, please forward us along!

We've had an incredibly busy month, with a panel on music and the metaverse, our start-up pitch competition at AWE, and presenting its award by its end. We are also one of the top VCs investing in the metaverse, according to Analytics Insight. An exciting month ahead of a summery July.

Dave Haynes & Petri Rajahalme (FOV Ventures)

In this edition:

• Startups and fundraising

• Major Platforms & M&A

• Datapoints

Startups and fundraising

Platforms continue to grow in value, integrated with the benefits of immersive technologies. KIT-AR - a worker platform - raised $2m in funding. Transfr VR raised £35m to help bring workers into high-wage roles, while Swave raised $7m to bring realistic holographic experiences to immersive applications.

Metaverse platforms continue to receive investment, as the activity layer of experiences. Mona, a metaverse platform designed around creatives, raised $14.6m in funding, while Kaleidoco raised $7m to blend web3 and AR entertainment. To support creatives, Echo3D raised $5.5m to continue its development in cloud authoring tools. If you want to be zen, Tripp raised $11.2m to build a 'mindful metaverse' - or if you want to organise a less zen metaverse event, RLTY raised $4m to help you make one.

The infrastructure of the metaverse continues to receive special attention, too. Saga raised $3.6m to build middleware for the metaverse, to provide necessary services. In London, 8XR raised $820k to fund its metaverse web engine.

Finally, we have seen that Jadu, an avatar-based NFT platform, raised $36m in funding - one of many examples in June. NFTs and blockchain-based experiences continue to receive attention, and we are following it closely as we focus on our metaverse-first approach.

Major Platforms & Acquisitions

The most significant announcement relates to the Metaverse Standards Forum, where major companies are coming together to explore open standards. Meta, NVIDIA, Alibaba, and even IKEA are part of the conversation. Not included in Apple or Roblox, at least as part of its launch.

Hardware companies continue to investigate social-based applications. Bytedance acquired PoliQ for an undisclosed sum, joining Pico Interactive in its immersive tech portfolio. PoliQ ran a popular virtual world, and its toolsets draw parallels with Meta's Horizon Worlds.

As a small addition, virtual try-on remains a focus for major retailers. For example, Walmart acquired Memori, an AR try-on startup, to bolster its virtual capabilities.

Datapoints

• 14.8m: Number of Oculus Quest 2 units sold, according to IDC. The Quest 2 may now be outselling the Xbox (though it is an estimation rather than confirmed).

• $30m: Amount that KPMG is investing in its workforce to investigate web3. 

• 75m: The number of lifetime players that visited Rec Room (across all platforms). 

That’s all for now. Have a great July, 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