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!

Last week, we were at Latitude defining the metaverse; and next week, Petri will be at Arctic15. If anyone is joining, please say hi!

And if you are AWE this week, reply to this email and say hello. You'll find us on the investor panel and judging the startup-track.

Dave Haynes & Petri Rajahalme (FOV Ventures)

In this edition:

• Startups and fundraising

• Major Platforms & M&A

• Datapoints

Startups and fundraising

We saw a range of platforms receive funding, as companies offer a space for creatives and brands to build upon. For example, Jadu - a web3 platform for AR - raised $36m. The most sizable investment from this month was Singapore-based BUD, a well-supported metaverse platform, which raised $37m from Sequoia to continue its growth. Most exciting for us the announcement of $4m in funding for Matt Miesniek's (exited 6D.ai to Niantic) new startup LivingCities.xyz. He'll be joined by a stellar founding team of Dennis Crowley (Foursquare founder) and John Gaeta (The Matrix, Magic Leap) to build a new social layer intertwining the Metaverse and reality. Ambitious? Definitely. And we're believers.

Supporting technologies saw a bounce in interest as well. Kinetix, an AI-assisted 3D animation pioneer, secured $11m in seed funding. Keep your eyes peeled for a few more great companies in this space. Slamcore, which gives spatial awareness to machines, also raised $16m in seed funding.

Training and development companies continued their constant growth.  Strivr raised $35m to continue building its VR training offering. And Sense Arena, a VR ice hockey training company, raised $3m - perhaps the most niche specialism we have covered so far. It was also great to see French based mixed reality headset developer Lynx raising $4m, led by Somnium Space. VR headsets with AR passthrough will be a growing theme with both Meta and Apple reportedly developing similar.

Other funding rounds did not fit into overall trends, but are noteworthy. RECON Labs raised $4.4m in seed funding, to help shoppers visualise wares via AR. zSpace will merge with EdtechX via a SPAC, to boost its US presence. And Speckle raised $5.5m to create an open source platform for 3D drawings.

Finally, the VC scene remains strong. Andreessen Horowitz unveiled a $600m venture fund for web3 and gaming related projects, while Tower 26, another venture fund, raised $50m to invest in VR games. At a time when global economic jitters, the Metaverse adjacent areas still remain a strong and growing theme for VCs globally.

Major Platforms & Acquisitions

AR continues its strong development, with companies like Niantic expanding on its suite of tools. Meanwhile, Google acquired Raxium to boost its AR ambitions, while Farfetch bought Wannaby for $29.4m, to develop AR technologies for its marketplace.

We continue to see platforms 'launch' in new worlds, as new 'metaverse plays' with a touch of experimentation. Spotify launched an island in Roblox, similar to Nike's offering. Meanwhile, The Nemesis brought the F1 Grand Prix into the metaverse as well. We expect these activations to continue, though become nuanced over time.

As a major platform, Meta continues to diversify its offering via partnerships and experiments. For example, Meta and Unity announced a partnership to increase access to XR education.

Datapoints

• Four: Number of headsets Meta planned to release by 2028, according to an investigation from The Information.

• Twenty: The number of VR games that the PlayStation VR may have at its launch.

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