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. If you know of founders, investors or anyone else that would find this investment-focused digest useful then please pass it along!

Dave Haynes & Petri Rajahalme (FOV Ventures)

In this edition:

• FOV Ventures news - we launched the new fund!

• Startups & Fundraising

• Major Platforms & M&A

• Datapoints

FOV Ventures News

March was an exciting month for us! We did a first close of €16.5m (of €25m) for FOV Ventures, to invest in European founders building the Metaverse. That meant we could officially launch and we had an overwhelmingly good response. Sifted broke the news the morning after our IRL launch event in London. To read more about the fund you can head over to our website and check this blog post that describes in more detail what we're looking to invest in.

We also aired our Viewpoints podcast on AWE's new content platform AWE.live for the first time and had HTC China President and VR thought leader Alvin Wang Graylin on the show. We talked about everything from the mainstream adoption of VR to what he thinks are the biggest long term opportunities for the Metaverse. Check it out via the video link below. The next Viewpoints will also air on AWE.live and we'll be speaking at the AWE conference in Santa Clara in June. Hopefully see you there IRL!

Startups & Fundraising

A major theme this month was gaming. Anzu, an in-game advertising platform, raised $20m to grow its network. Tiny Rebel Games raises $7m to build the Petaverse Network, its digital pets initiative that combines web3, XR, and gaming. Bandai Namco is investing $160m into their Gundam metaverse, focusing on their core IP. And lastly, veteran VR studio nDreams raised $35m to expand its development and publishing.

Consumer-facing entertainment and fashion companies saw a lot of attention as well. LIV raised $8.5m to help expand its streaming capabilities. Oorbit raised $5m from the likes of Deadmau5 to grow their entertainment platform. And RSTLSS, a digital fashion label and co-creation platform, raising $3.5m with celebrity investors like Paris Hilton.

AR saw some major investments as well. One is Alibaba leading a $60m funding round into Nreal. Another is Rokid, a Chinese AR company that raised $160m to expand globally. On medtech, MediView secured $9.9m in SAFE funding to continue delivering AR in surgeries. Additionally, Osso VR raised $66m to broaden their VR surgery offering.

Outside of these trends, RETìníZE is disrupting the virtual production pipeline with $2m in seed funding to expand their growth. If you want to learn a new language, Immerse raised $9m; while Volta is expanding their musical endeavours with a new round of $3m.

If you need help expanding too, Qualcomm launched a $100m round to help build the metaverse. So is Enjin, with a separate $100m fund.

Finally, the most substantial round came from Bored Ape Yacht Club, which raised $450m to build an NFT metaverse. Yuga Labs, the parent company, is now valued at $4bn.

Major Platforms & Acquisitions

More companies are acquiring teams that either develop the hardware components behind computer vision devices, or the talent behind their development. After working on the enterprise side of AR for some time, Google acquired Raxium to own more physical components with the creation of hardware. Meanwhile, Tier Mobility acquired Fantasmo to bring their camera positioning tech in-house. 8th Wall joined Niantic, keeping their core banding while assisting the company with their WebAR efforts. Finally, Snap acquired NextMind to potentially integrate brain-computer technologies into its AR line-up. It's going to be exciting to watch the next generation of device interfaces develop and get adopted!

One company made a few movements in March; Adobe is expanding its own capabilities with its suite of AR/VR tools. The company is expanding their team as well by acquiring BRIO XR, a cloud-based XR company.

HTC continues their exploration of the metaverse, releasing a video looking into a day in its expanse. Autodesk acquired The Wild, to provide enterprise companies services for the metaverse. Keep an eye on the growth of the metaverse, as The Sandbox hits two million users. Finally, Netflix acquired Next Games, as part of their ongoing initiative to expand into gaming.

Datapoints

• Nike reported that seven million people have visited Nikeland, its Roblox metaverse store

• The Sandbox metaverse hits two million users and launches Alpha Season 2

• Roblox saw 14.4 million users acquire 74.4 million free virtual jackets in the first day of it launching its new 'layered clothing' for Avatars upgrade

That’s all for now. Have a great April 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