Ready Player Me, a gaming technology company based in Tallinn that focuses on bringing cross-platform avatars to VR and beyond, has raised $56M in a Series B round.
David Baszucki, a co-founder of Roblox, Justin Kan, Sebastian Knutsson, and Riccardo Zacconi, co-founders of Twitch and King Games, Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Ventures, the D’Amelio family, Punk6529, Snowfro, Collab Currency, Plural, and Konvoy Ventures were also investors in the round, which was led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Andreessen Horowitz, the storied venture capital firm that has recently doubled down on all things web3, including metaverse technology; and it is joined by a longer list of equally illustrious names. Roblox co-founder David Baszucki; Twitch co-founder Justin Kan.
The Series B investment, which brings Ready Player Me‘s total outside funding to $85.5M after a $13M Series A raised in December 2021, is the largest one to date, the company claims.
Fund usage
With the money, the company will be able to continue scaling its avatar system to give it more flexibility for developers, develop fresh tools to assist developers in making money from avatar assets, and develop tools for individual creators to participate in the cross-game avatar market.
“What will unlock the true metaverse experience is interoperability between games, worlds and applications and a consistent identity for users across all experiences,” said Timmu Tõke, co-founder and CEO, Ready Player Me. “We think it’s essential for virtual worlds users to create an avatar they love and buy avatar skins and accessories that work across the metaverse and are not stuck in one game. This infusion of funds will allow Ready Player Me to continue scaling the avatar system to make it more flexible for developers, create new tools to help developers monetize with avatar assets, and build tools for individual creators to take part of the cross-game avatar marketplace.”
“Ready Player Me is loved by both developers and players as the largest platform for avatar-systems-as-a-service and is well on their way to building the interoperable identity protocol for the open Metaverse,” said Jonathan Lai, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “We’ve been deeply impressed by the team’s blend of developer empathy, technical chops, and entrepreneurial pragmatism, and couldn’t be more excited to partner with them on this journey.”
Ready Player Me, which was founded in 2014 by Timmu Tõke, provides developers with a ready-made avatar system that allows users to have a persistent online identity. It creates avatars from a single user photo, and it works on desktop, web, and mobile. The company is considering bringing fashion brands into the fold so that users can purchase digital accessories, such as Adidas, New Balance, Dior, Pull&Bear, and Warner Brothers’ Dune film outfits.
Avatar system
According to the company, its cross-platform avatar system is used by over 3,000 apps across both Web2 and Web3, including VR social platforms like VRChat, Spatial, vSpatial, and Somnium Space.
