“Ready Player Me” metaverse platform closes $56M funding round led by a16z

Ready Player Me (RPM), a metaverse platform for cross-game avatars, has raised $56 million in a Series B round led by investment giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The company sees interoperability as the key to the virtual world, allowing users to bring their digital identities between metaverses. 

The platform focuses on making virtual worlds more interoperable and fostering open economies, as well as developing an identity protocol for the open metaverse. This allows players and developers to bring their identity and digital assets into any virtual world or 3D experience.

The participants of the funding round included David Baszucki, the co-founder of Roblox; Justin Kan, the co-founder of Twitch; Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi, the co-founders of King; Collab Currency; Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat VenturesD; Konvoy Ventures, Plural; Punk6529; Snowfro; sports and entertainment company Endeavor; and D’Amelio family.

The metaverse platform is used by over 3,000 games and apps, including RTFKT, Spatial, Somnium Space, and VRChat, which use RPM’s avatars and has collaborated with well-known brands, such as Adidas, Dior, New Balance, Pull&Bear, and Warner Bros.

RPM offers a customizable plug-and-play system for 3D avatars and the benefit of plugging more than five million avatars into a cross-game network.

“We’re doing cross-game answers for the metaverse, as we saw that people spend a lot of time in virtual worlds. The metaverse is not one app, or one game or one platform. It’s a network of thousands of different virtual worlds. So it makes sense for users to have an avatar to traverse across many different virtual worlds,”

Timmu Tõke, CEO of Ready Player Me, told GamesBeat.

With the funding, Ready Player Me will continue scaling the avatar system, create additional tools for developers to monetize assets, and build tools for creators to join the cross-game avatar marketplace.

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Agne is a journalist who covers the latest trends and developments in the metaverse, AI, and Web3 industries for the Metaverse Post. Her passion for storytelling has led her to conduct numerous interviews with experts in these fields, always seeking to uncover exciting and engaging stories. Agne holds a Bachelor’s degree in Literary Studies from the University of Amsterdam and has an extensive background in writing about a wide range of topics including cybersecurity, travel, art, and culture. She has also volunteered as an editor for the animal rights organization, “Open Cages,” where she helped raise awareness about animal welfare issues. Currently, Agne splits her time between Barcelona, Spain, and Vilnius, Lithuania, where she continues to pursue her passion for journalism. Contact her on [email protected].

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Agne Cimermanaite

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Agne Cimermanaite

Agne is a journalist who covers the latest trends and developments in the metaverse, AI, and Web3 industries for the Metaverse Post. Her passion for storytelling has led her to conduct numerous interviews with experts in these fields, always seeking to uncover exciting and engaging stories. Agne holds a Bachelor’s degree in Literary Studies from the University of Amsterdam and has an extensive background in writing about a wide range of topics including cybersecurity, travel, art, and culture. She has also volunteered as an editor for the animal rights organization, “Open Cages,” where she helped raise awareness about animal welfare issues. Currently, Agne splits her time between Barcelona, Spain, and Vilnius, Lithuania, where she continues to pursue her passion for journalism. Contact her on [email protected].

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