Capitol Records may have run into trouble with its avatar signing, but elsewhere in the metaverse there is funding raining in on startups developing technology to build virtual characters.
Yesterday two hefty rounds were announced: $56m for Ready Player Me, and $50m for Inworld AI.
Ready Player Me is developing avatars that can be used across different virtual worlds and games, and its investors include founders from Roblox, Twitch and Candy Crush Saga developer King Games, as well as the D’Amelio family (of TikTok fame) and big-bucks VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. There’s a music angle to this startup too: earlier this year Ready Player Me inked a deal with Pixelynx to support the latter’s in-development musical metaverse.
Inworld AI‘s tech is about providing “brains for virtual characters” in games and virtual worlds, with a toolkit to build “any intelligent virtual character by simply explaining the character in natural language”. It’s been part of Disney’s startup accelerator this year.
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