The new Snapdragon Metaverse Fund is aimed to fuel the adoption of augmented and virtual reality across various fields including gaming, health, media, entertainment, education, and enterprise.
Qualcomm, best known as a supplier of chips for smartphones, announced it established a $100 million Snapdragon Metaverse Fund to invest in developers and other companies that build new extended reality experiences as well as AR and AI technologies for the metaverse across various fields including gaming, health, media, entertainment, education, and enterprise.
The funding will be deployed by backing the XR companies through a combination of venture investments via Qualcomm Ventures, the company's corporate venture capital arm, and grants from Qualcomm Technologies. Recipients may also be given the opportunity to have early access to new hardware kits, XR platform technology, and marketing and promotion opportunities. Applications for the Snapdragon Metaverse Fund will open in June.
Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated, noted that the funding will enable both consumers and enterprises to build the metaverse as well as engage in it, referring to the company as the "ticket to the metaverse". He also added: "Through the Snapdragon Metaverse Fund, we look forward to empowering developers and companies of all sizes as they push boundaries of what’s possible as we enter into this new generation of spatial computing."
Qualcomm has previously made large venture investments in the VR and AR space as well as 5G and AI. In addition, the company's XR2 chip is integrated into Quest 2, and apart from Meta's headsets, it's also embedded into other standalone VR and AR devices. Currently, the company is also working on a new AR headset development kit, Snapdragon Spaces, that Qualcomm is developing in a collaboration with Final Fantasy publisher Square Enix.
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