Metaverse Avatar Platform, Ready Player Me, raised $56M in a series B investment round led by A16Z.

TL;DR

---

Ready Player Me has raised $56 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz's A16Z.Ready Player Me is a metaverse company that strives to make it simple for anyone to develop an avatar they love and can use in virtual worlds.It is an open Meta universe devoted to developing an interoperable Identity Protocol, allowing players and developers to bring their identities and assets to any 3D experience.The company has said the new funding would enable it to expand its team and provide financial stability in the volatile markets.

Introduction

---

The Estonian startup that creates avatars for the metaverse, Ready Player Me, has announced that it has raised $56 million in new funding. Andreessen Horowitz's crypto and gaming funds A16Z led the Series B round. The round included David Baszucki, co-founder of giant online gaming platform Roblox; Justin Kan, co-founder of game streaming platform Twitch; King Games co-founders Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi; Hartbeat Ventures; and Robin Chan, co-founder of gaming nonfungible token marketplace Fractal. Avatars are virtual bodies that people use to express themselves in virtual worlds by moving around and representing their physical selves. VRChat, Spatial, Somnium Space, and RFTKT are among the over 3,000 apps integrated with Ready Player Me to manage over 5 million customized avatars.

What is Ready Player Me?

---

Ready Player Me is a metaverse company that strives to make it simple for anyone to generate an avatar they love and can use in virtual worlds. The company started based on the observation that people would spend more and more time in 3D virtual worlds, necessitating the need for an avatar that genuinely represents them and, eventually, travels across many virtual experiences.

The company initially started developing 3D scanning hardware when it was incubated by Wolf3D, a 3D face scanning technology service founded in 2014. It progressed to developing custom avatar systems for companies such as Tencent, Huawei, HTC, Wargaming, and Verizon. Wolf3D has amassed a database of over 20,000 face scans in its eight year-journey. Wolf3D founder Timmu Toke stated that it is currently the largest face scan patent database and that it took his team four years to develop a deep learning solution.

The company created a solution to predict how to shape a face from a selfie and finally achieve accurate prediction and rendering of a natural face in a 2D photo, generating real-time animated avatars unlike Animoji on Apple iOS, used by Tencent, Huawei, HTC, Wargaming, Verizon, and others. Enterprise users, through the company's innovative technology, create their 3D avatar system.

The team behind the project launched Ready Player in May 2020 and has rapidly scaled it to over 3,000 customers across the metaverse. Essentially, Ready Player Me provides a distribution advantage to developers by connecting them to a cross-game network of over 5 million avatars. Developers can also generate new revenue by selling interoperable skins and avatar assets, which can be traded across the web and earn creators' royalties on each transaction.

Ready Player Me and Interoperability

---

Ready Player Me's main innovation is interoperability. It defines itself as an open meta-universe devoted to developing an interoperable Identity Protocol, allowing developers and players to bring their identities and assets to any 3D experience.

A16z mentioned that most games and virtual worlds today are closed economies when investing in Ready Player Me. Instead of confining players to a walled garden, a virtual world that is part of an open meta world will allow them to have their own identities and bring their digital assets wherever they want.

Timmu of Ready player Me also stated that the virtual avatar's primary function is interoperability. Avatars are the virtual world's representations of users, so they are an essential part of the meta-universe experience and can express their identity in the digital field. Users can purchase and wear items for their avatars, and these assets then travel with users to create a more unified experience across multiple virtual worlds. This functionality enables the avatar to serve as the meta universe's wallet.

Ordinary players can use avatar creator to create their own virtual avatar on the application developed in collaboration with ready player me. Ready Player Me allows users to create 3D virtual images directly from photos. After making it, players can use it as their virtual identity on social media platforms such as TikTok, Twitter, and Discord, as well as games and other applications that work with Ready Player Me. Ready Player Me is compatible with desktop, web, and mobile devices.

Developers can integrate the ready Player Me SDK or API into their applications to obtain avatars created by users. Developers can also earn additional revenue by selling interoperable skins and Ready Player Me avatar assets. These assets can be traded throughout the cooperative network and earn royalties on each transaction. Ready Player Me works with various development platforms, including web, unity, unreal, react native, Android, and iOS native.

The Launch of "Wearable NFT" to create a digital Asset Store.

---

At the moment, Ready Player Me has launched the NFT wearable series. The NFT series includes 5555 randomly generated 3D collections cast on the polygon blockchain that can be used in over 400 meta spaces. The floor price is 0.08 eth, and 1800 people have purchased it.

The original NFT series Punks airdrop was also released by Ready Player Me. The owner of cryptopunk NFT can create a one-of-a-kind 3D avatar of punk for use in multiple virtual worlds. Ready Player Me said it would share 50% of NFT revenue with developers to expand the meta-universe.

The new funding and the future of Ready Player Me

The company has said the new funding would enable it to expand its team from 51 people to 100 and provide financial stability in the upcoming volatile markets. The plan of the company moving forward includes:

• Scaling the Ready Player Me avatar creator to make it more flexible and performant for the various types of developers.
• 
  
• Creating avatar content creation tools will allow developers,brands, and individual artists to develop and sell avatar customization assets that will work in thousands of virtual worlds.
• 
  
• Increasing avatar diversity through the use of body types, granular clothing customization, more accurate face shape prediction, stylization, and other features.
• 
  
• Adding other avatars to Ready Player Me to achieve the goal of making it easier for avatars to travel between virtual worlds.

Conclusion

---

The new funding for Ready Player Me led by A16Z is a testimony to the booming Metaverse and Web 3 sector of the blockchain amidst the market downturn. Ready Player Me is undoubtedly a genie and unicorn company in the virtual avatars industry. In addition to the rapid financing pace, Ready Player Me has made significant strides in customer development and interoperability.



Author: M. Olatunji, Gate.io Researcher
Disclaimer:
* This article represents only the views of the observers and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
*Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all other cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.