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 are are about to dive into the finale of 2022. What did you think of the year? Any trends you were excited about? Hopes for 2023? Reply to this email with your thoughts, and we will pick our favourite answers for the January edition.

Dave Haynes & Petri Rajahalme (FOV Ventures)

In this edition:

• News from FOV Ventures

• Funding and acquisitions

• Analysis

• Datapoints

News from FOV Ventures

We had a great time at the Slush conference this year. It was great to see so many awesome founders and investors converge in Finland for 3-4 days of great conversations, talks and side events. Highlights for us included the OpenProtocol, the Metaverse mixer with ReadyPlayerMe and a great after-party with our friends from Varjo and Nordic Ninja. We also teamed up with the Good Cartel to document and publish a landscape of all the startups in Finland working in Metaverse and Web3. Check it out in full here and you can suggest anyone we missed here.

In other news, we were featured in the London & Partners' Immersive Tech Report and have been busy concluding several new investments which we promise to reveal in the New Year!

Funding and acquisitions

While a quieter month for funding, metaverse platforms saw a lot of attention. Rekt Studios raised $1.5m as it sets up to release its own platform in due time. What was particularly striking was the range of different types. For example, RendezVerse - an events metaverse platform - raised £7.5m in funding. Compare this to Trace, which is a play-to-earn metaverse platform that raised $3m; or even Arcomia, a VR metaverse based on the blockchain which raised $200k. The platform which raised the most was YAHAHA, a creator-first platform, which raised $40m to grow its development team. Different types for differing markets, but we will observe them all to learn which performs best.

More technical companies saw investments as well. Augmedit, a medical startup based in Amsterdam, raised $1m in seed funding. Meanwhile, Arcturus raised $11m to grow its volumetric video capabilities. And Anything.World raised $7.5m to assist 3D content creators with AI powered animations. The highest value goes to Leia, which makes screens that can run 3D content without specs; the company raised $125m in funding.

A few AR companies were supported. inCitu, which uses AR for city planning, raised $2m; while London Dynamics, which works on AR e-commerce, raised £1m.

Finally, Unity completed its merger with ironSource to expand its portfolio of game tools. After some initial controversy, we will see how this will impact Unity; the platform is a favourite among spatial developers around the world.

Analysis

November was dominated by two headlines that occupied the news cycle. The first is that Meta laid off a large portion of its workforce; and the second is that FTX collapsed, as the exchange buckled over its low liquidity. The reasons behind both are multifaceted, but an overrunning narrative is that metaverse or blockchain-based technologies do not have a future.

We disagree, for a few reasons. We've seen a stream of good news come in throughout the month which solidified trust in immersive technologies. European metaverse startups raised $666m so far in 2022, multiple times higher than the previous year. We have also seen studies that show VR helps with soft skills training, or how AR can help with onboarding. (These statistics will be highlighted in our Datapoints section, below).

Our view is that the underpinning technologies remain sound for investments, as their worth has been proven multiple times. We highlighted the high number of metaverse platforms receiving investments this month, and we expect the trend to continue.

Datapoints

• 86%: Percentage of onboarding managers who found that AR helps with onboarding.

• $666m: Amount of funding raised by metaverse startups in Europe, throughout 2022. 

• Netherlands: The country considered to be the most 'ready' for the metaverse based on internet connectivity and infrastructure. (Switzerland and Lituania follow shortly follow).

That’s all for now. Have a great December (and Christmas!), and as always, please do send us your feedback, comments, or any interesting new startups you know of in this space. We'll be back in the New Year with some great new content and the reveal of our portfolio to date.

Dave Haynes & Petri Rajahalme (FOV Ventures)

http://fov.ventures