With plans to develop a “connective passport for the metaverse”, metaverse avatar platform ‘Ready Player Me’ has raised fresh funding from top industry backers, including the likes of Taavet+Sten and Samsung.
We’re also working on a set of monetization tools to help developers make money with in-game assets and NFTs.
Learn more about what's coming on our blog: https://t.co/fwn2zVXYvN
— Ready Player Me (@readyplayerme) December 28, 2021
The platform raised $13 million from its Series A round led by Taavet+Sten, a firm led by the co-founder of Wise, and Sten Tamkivi, the co-founder of Teleport. Participants in the round included the co-founder of GitHub, Tom Preston-Werner, Samsung Next Ventures, Stefano Corazza, Adobe’s head of augmented reality, and several other backers.
Ready Player Me aims to build a technology that allows users to create one custom avatar for the entire metaverse. According to its press release, the platform’s avatars are already being used by 900+ companies, including VRChat and Somnium Space.
The platform also wants to sell NFT wearables and virtual fashion for avatars in the future as more mainstream fashion brands look to establish their presence in the space. It has already partnered with Warner Brothers, Dior, and New Balance to further its involvement in the space.
Ready Player Me CEO Timmu Tõke commented in the announcement:
“2021 has been a breakout year for Ready Player Me – our avatar platform adoption has grown from 25 to 900 companies. By giving people avatars that travel across virtual worlds, we can make the metaverse more connected. The metaverse is not one place or platform, it’s a network of thousands of experiences.”
In the future, the company plans to utilize its funds to increase the number of employees from 30 to more than 70, and build avatar tools for developers. Another initiative the company looks forward to is to help developers make money with avatars through in-game asset sales and NFTs.
With Series A, we’re going to continue building the best avatar system for developers across the metaverse. Next year, we will be investing in custom content creation tools and improving the avatar performance and quality with additional styles, body types.
— Ready Player Me (@readyplayerme) December 28, 2021
