The potential for immersive experiences is enormous. Customers are intrigued about immersive technology, especially the metaverse, and immersive experiences will eventually help brands distinguish their customer experience and boost their operations.
Cashing on that, Hadean, a metaverse startup backed by Epic Games and based in London, raised an additional $5M to ‘supercharge the metaverse’ and accelerate the deployment of the company’s cutting-edge metaverse infrastructure solution.
The additional funding came from Ericsson Ventures, Metrea Discovery, VU Venture Partners, Sanctor Capital and Tirta Ventures.
The new capital adds to the company’s £30M Series A investment round in September 2022, which was led by Molten Ventures and included Epic Games, 2050 Capital, Alumni Ventures, Aster Capital, Entrepreneur First, and InQTel.
Hadean CEO, Craig Beddis, said, “We are thrilled to have the support of such a diverse and experienced group of investors. This additional funding will enable us to continue the significant progress we have made off the back of our Series A and expedite the advancement of our cloud-based solutions for the metaverse. Our objective is to bridge physical and virtual worlds to improve decision-making, support the creator economy and, ultimately, enhance the quality of life in the real world. We believe that the metaverse’s true success and widespread adoption depend on the creators’ ability to build their own experiences at scale, using open and robust metaverse-as-a-service technologies.”
Paul McNamara, Vice President of Corporate Development at Ericsson Ventures said, “The Metaverse is one of the most important 5G use cases. Hadean provides a scalable, proven infrastructure to power the future of the metaverse. Together with 5G, Hadean will unlock unlimited possibilities within the metaverse. Ericsson Ventures is excited to support Hadean in its journey to further drive the immersive experience for both enterprises and consumers.”
Founded in 2015 by Aidan Hobson Sayers, Alec Mocatta, Craig Beddis, Jason Hardjosoekatmo, Rashid Mansoor, Hadean creates web3 components that are utilised in the creation of metaverse experiences. The company was formed with the purpose of increasing the size of immersive experiences, which, despite Facebook’s costly push into virtual reality, have remained limited thus far.
Hadean’s technology has been used to dynamically power large-scale applications, such as the EVE Online Aether Wars space battle event in 2020, in collaboration with game developers CCP Games, and a city-sized digital replica of Estonia. Recently, the company collaborated with Connected Places Catapult to create a eHighways digital twin simulation to aid in modern transportation sustainability.
Hadean seeks to address some of the metaverse’s most pressing issues, such as size and latency. The company has previously handled large-scale, high-volume events, including the EVE Online Aether Wars event.
The company’s distributed cloud platform allows scalability, security, and interoperability, enabling enterprise, commercial, gaming, and government customers to drive the metaverse and immersive digital experiences.
Hadean has collaborated with companies including Microsoft, Minecraft, Epic Games, Sony, Gamescoin, Pilxelynx, Francis Crick, CAE, BAE, and Thales.
