Metaverse Avatar Platform Ready Player Me Raises $56m in Series B Funding

Last week, to promote the launch of Meta's metaverse effort Horizon Worlds in France and Spain, Mark Zuckerberg posted a screenshot of his digital avatar which was met with a tsunami of mockery for bad graphics of both the avatar and the world shown in the image. He soon responded to the criticism, promising "major updates" to the social virtual reality app that, among others, will include improved graphics of the virtual avatars.

Yesterday, Ready Player Me, metaverse-related platform which provides cross-game avatar system, announced that it has raised $56 million in a Series B round of funding. The Estonia-based startup which already can boast 5 million avatars across over 3,000 partners says it will use the funding to grow its business.

According to Ready Player Me, the money will help expand the company's team as well as support the platform by adding more developer tools, including those for monetization, and more services for creators who use Ready Player Me.

The company also noted that it plans to improve avatar diversity with body types, granular clothing customization, more accurate face shape prediction, and stylization as wellas add other avatars from various platforms on Ready Player Me as it sees its goal as to "help any avatars to travel across virtual worlds."

"The metaverse is not a single app. It's a network of millions of virtual worlds people visit to play games, socialize and collaborate," the company wrote in a press release. "We believe in the future of an open and connected metaverse that is built by many developers and creators and is not controlled by one company."

The round was led by by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) via the company’s gaming investment initiative GAMES FUND ONE with the participation of Roblox co-founder David Baszucki, Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, co-founders of King Riccardo Zacconi and Sebastian Knutsson. Plural, Endeavor, Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Ventures, D’Amelio family, Punk6529, Snowfro, Nordic Ninja, Konvoy, and many other investors also took part in the Series B round.

You can learn more about Ready Player Me and the funding round here. Also, don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.