Idealab is a technology incubator that provides resources to allow start-ups to rapidly introduce innovative products and services. The company’s mission is to challenge the status quo, to be bold, and to tackle big ideas.  Idealab provides the first round of capital, recruits a CEO and team, and then works with the company to quickly ramp up its business.

Idealab

PreAngel is an incubator focused on early-stage AI startups. Investment in each project ranges from 50K to 1M USD. In addition to the acquisition, PreAngel plays a key role as ''co-founder'', providing guidance in startup operation, business model refinement, and industry resources.

PreAngel

Inmaginator accelerates glocal talent and collaborates startup ecosystems in inspired Asian locations. While our focus is on web, mobile, media and IoT startups, they are also attracted by those with creative takes on traditional businesses such as education, health, beauty and F&B.   Aside from seed funding, co-worker spaces, investor networks, pitching guidance and mentorship, Inmaginator provides accelerated startups with access to 80 tech engineers and 250 designers from 123RF.  Inmaginator aims to develop entrepreneurs on the idyllic island of Jeju, Korea and the charming technopolis that is Bandung, Indonesia, and showcase them to the world. At the end of 2014, they launched our first incubator in the Jeju Science Park. This will be followed by an accelerator program in the 2nd half of 2015.   They are also working towards creating world-class startup and creative campuses in Jeju and Bandung with full boarding, co-working, conference and R&D facilities, whereby hundreds of entrepreneurs-in-residence can collaborate, invent, pitch, be mentored and funded for 3-6 month periods at a time by a host of leading accelerators. Programs will encourage interactive immersion in cross-cultural, innovative and inspiring surroundings.

Inmaginator

Third Wave is an early stage venture capital firm focused on the Digital Media sector.

Third Wave Digital

Founded by HTC Vive, Vive X is a global accelerator fund that specializes in the virtual reality sector. Our mission is to help cultivate, foster and grow the global VR ecosystem by supporting startups and providing them with education, investment and mentorship. We currently operate in San Francisco, Beijing, Taipei, Shenzhen and Tel Aviv, with an AUM of US$100M.

VIVE X

CrestValue is a venture capital institution that specializes in high-tech, growth-oriented enterprise equity investment.

CrestValue

Shenzhen Leaguer Venture Capital Co., Ltd. is a high-tech venture capital company founded by Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen (RITS) in August 1999. Its current registered capital is RMB 333.3333 million, managing assets amounted to RMB 1.5 billion. With solid capital strength, rich experience of investment and flexible mechanism, Leaguer VC has invested more than 50 portfolio companies, ranging from IT, new material, medicine, electronics to optomechatronics and hi-tech incubators, etc. The average IRR for the current investments exceeds 30%. Leaguer VC has successfully finished its fund-raising of RMB 160 million in 2009 and set up fund management companies and venture capital companies located in Changzhou and Wuxi.

Leaguer Venture Capital

Hertz Lichtenstein & Young their firm works with superstar musicians, actors, creators and entrepreneurs in areas of music, film, television, and digital content for media and technology companies.

Hertz Lichtenstein & Young

NewDo devotes to help ambitious startup companies to succeed at their initial stage with our fund and other strategic resources.

NewDo Venture

E3 Capital Partners is a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm focusing on cross border investments.   E3 Capital is uniquely positioned to serve entrepreneurs who have chosen us as their partners.  E3 Capital leverages our extensive network of media, technology industry connections and oversea resources to help entrepreneurs gain visibility, build strategic relationships, successfully bring their products to market, and build businesses.

E3 Capital Partners

Cybernaut Westlake Partners

Dream Maker Entertainment enables more than ordinary performances and stages to be created. Dreammaker hosts about 200 performances at home and abroad based on its long experience in the domestic and overseas concert business, and runs the best live entertainment business in Korea based on a solid network of partners in over 30 countries around the world.

Dream Maker Entertainment

K11 Investment targets disruptive businesses that will shape the future consumption patterns of the Millennial and Generation Z audiences. Founded by billionaire entrepreneur Adrian Cheng, K11 Investment is the investment arm of his overarching K11 Group, with a cultural ecosystem that encompasses art and retail, property, fashion, tech, entertainment and media development.

K11 Investment

Chain Capital was established in April 2015. The teams covered in Silicon Valley, Toronto, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Moscow, London and Shanghai. The core members are the industry experts from Franklin Templeton Sealand Fund Mangament, Facebook, Qudian, Ogilvy, ShopEx and others. Chain Capital specializes in investing blockchain projects, discover and help the outstanding teams to better use blockchain technology in order to make the world better.

Chain Capital

Established in 2000 as an early-stage venture capital arm of SoftBank Group, SBVA has a storied history of empowering extraordinary entrepreneurs across the globe. In 2023, we joined forces with The Edgeof, a global startup ecosystem builder founded by Taizo Son, JP Lee, and Atsushi Taira and began our new chapter as an independent entity with a renewed commitment to fostering innovation and technological advancement.

SBVA

memBrain help global brands navigate the entertainment industry.

memBrain

Established in 2000, SB China Capital (SBCVC) is a leading venture capital and private equity firm that manages both USD and RMB funds. Their investment focuses on high-tech, high growth companies in TMT, clean technology, healthcare, consumer/retail, and advanced manufacturing sectors; and they invest across all stages of companies. With extensive entrepreneurial and operating experiences, their professional and seasoned deal team members recognize the vision and champion the ideas of start-up companies. In addition to providing capital support, they help their portfolio companies realize their strategic and commercial potential by giving value-adding services and advices including planning, business development, recruiting and resources deployment. They have a proven track record and solid reputation in identifying high potential start-ups and creating successful industry-leading companies. Some of their spotlight portfolio companies are Alibaba, Taobao, Focus Media, GDS, BGI, Ankon, Di’an, and Edan. With their operational headquarters located in Shanghai and regional offices spread in Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Taiwan, they have an extensive coverage of the greater China region and access to potential investment opportunities.

SBCVC

Tencent is an internet service portal offering value-added internet, mobile, telecom, and online advertising services. Its communications and social platforms Weixin and QQ connect users with each other, with digital content and daily life services in just a few clicks.  Tencent has maintained steady growth under its user-oriented operating strategies. It provides value-added internet, mobile, and telecom services, as well as online advertising under the strategic goal of providing users with ''one-stop online lifestyle services.'' Tencent’s Internet platforms in China – QQ (QQ Instant Messenger), WeChat, QQ.com, QQ Games, Qzone, 3g.QQ.com, SoSo, PaiPai, and Tenpay – aim to address the various needs of internet users, including communication, information, entertainment, e-commerce, and others. In September 2013, Tencent's market valuation rose to $101 billion, and as of November 21, 2013, QQ had 2 billion active users and WeChat had 650 million monthly active users. The numbers of active users for QQ mail, Qzone, Tencent Weibo, and QQ news were 274 million, 626 million, 220 million, and 150 million, respectively. Tencent was founded in November of 1998. In April 2000, the IDG and PCCW invested a total of $2.2 million dollars in the company. Tencent was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (SEHK) on June 16, 2004. Baidu, Alibaba, and Netease are Tencent's major competitors.

Tencent

Fengshion Capital was established with a vision of coupling optimized financial solutions and commercial resources to support broad industry innovation. They work closely with entrepreneurs to discover new opportunities and to build a better tomorrow. Their team operates with the same enthusiasm they expect of the entrepreneurs they invest in. They bring to their work and investments a commitment to excellence and strive to be true value add partners to their portfolio companies. Their investors are a mix of industry leaders and prominent financial institutions; their sectoral expertise and extensive networks bring an additional dimension of competitiveness to their portfolio companies. Their investment team is dedicated to careful stewardship of their LPs funds and to generating meaningful returns while broadening their investors’ exposure to bleeding edge innovation.

Fengshion Capital

ObEN

ObEN is an artificial intelligence (AI) company that is building a decentralized AI platform for intelligent avatars, enabling never before possible social and virtual interactions. The company’s technology allows users to create intelligent 3D avatars that look, sound, and behave like them. Deployed on the blockchain, ObEN’s Personal AI (PAI) technology enables users to create, use, and manage their own PAI on a secure, decentralized platform. Founded in 2014, ObEN is a Tencent, Softbank Ventures Korea and HTC Vive X portfolio company and is located at Idealab in Pasadena, California. To learn more about ObEN, please visit oben.com.

ObEN is a decentralized AI platform with text-to-speech capabilities, avatar generation tools, image enhancement, and voice conversion features. It allows users to create intelligent 3D avatars that look, sound, and behave like them to use in various social and virtual interactions. ObEN has adopted the Project PAI blockchain protocol, an open-source decentralized public utility blockchain designed to secure and authenticate personal artificial intelligence (PAIs) and related user data, to provide users more control over their digital identity. In addition to metaverse applications, its avatars can be used in video content, livestreams, gaming, social media, virtual assistant applications, and virtual celebrity appearances.

Metaverse Experience Platforms

<div>ObEN's platform allows users to create their own digital twin by uploading a picture of themselves to the platform. Virtual celebrities, gaming, entertainment, and live streaming are noted as key uses of ObEN avatars. The avatars are designed to make interaction easy and aim to enhance the naturalness and simplicity of the virtual assistant or digital character. Once the avatar is created, users can live-stream and produce videos by transferring content to ObEN's real-time content creation platform.</div>

Imbuing emotion into human-digital interactions

Digital Humans

Oben, three others secure early-stage funding

ObEN is a decentralized AI platform with text-to-speech capabilities, avatar generation tools, image enhancement, and voice conversion features. It allows users to create intelligent 3D avatars that look, sound, and behave like them to use in various social and virtual interactions. ObEN has adopted the Project PAI blockchain protocol, an open-source decentralized public utility blockchain designed to secure and authenticate personal artificial intelligence (PAIs) and related user data, to provide users more control over their digital identity. In addition to metaverse applications, its avatars can be used in video content, livestreams, gaming, social media, virtual assistant applications, and virtual celebrity appearances.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2022, the company has worked with companies such as Caesars Entertainment, Discovery Channel, VICE, MedStar Health, and SM Entertainment.

Gather is a virtual space with web-based video calling capabilities, combined with a 2D pixel art-based map and characters that allow individuals to carry out natural conversations in a multitude of settings (office, university, etc.). The company was a part of the Y Combinator Summer 2019 cohort. The platform also offers private virtual meeting spaces with chat, whiteboards, document, and screen sharing features. Further, Gather also offers integrations with other enterprise applications, such as Slack, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. The company claims to have superior compatibility with spatial technology due to its natively built video conferencing system.It operates with a freemium subscription model that is free for up to 10 users, with paid plans starting at USD 7 per month for up to 500 people. The company also generates revenue for virtual conferences (free for up to 10 users), with paid plans starting at USD 3 per user per day.The company has a long-term vision for the metaverse to freely make work and educational opportunities available worldwide. In line with its vision, Gather has hosted over 20,000 virtual professional events, including academic conferences, job fairs, and professional societies (November 2021).Key customer and partnershipsAs of January 2024, the platform was used by over 1,000 teams, including notable enterprises, such as Y Combinator, Yelp, and Notion.Funding and financialsGather raised USD 50 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6425">November 2021</a>. The fresh funds were expected to be funneled toward expanding its operations and business reach.Key competitors: None under the same stage.

Gather

Mytaverse offers a hardware-agnostic 3D metaverse platform that enables enterprises to digitally host a wide range of activities, such as meetings, conferences, training simulations, and tradeshows. The company also allows for the creation of branded metaverses in the form of functioning environments or digital twins. Mytaverse also provides support for CRM integrations and customer profiles, with support for 50 users on any given virtual world. Further, Mytaverse claims that its tech allows for the creation of photorealistic spaces.Key customers and partnershipsNotable customers included Nike, PepsiCo, Dolby and Dassault Aviation, among others.Funding and financialsIn April 2022, Mytaverse raised USD 7.6 million in a seed funding round led by Blumberg Capital. The funds were raised to accelerate product development, expand sales and tech teams, and further expand interactions with brands and support strategic partnerships. As part of the deal, David Blumberg (founder and managing partner, Blumberg Capital) and John Paul Milciunas (general partner, Baselayer Ventures) were expected to join Mytaverse’s board.

Mytaverse

Alta is the game studio that developed Township Tale, an open-world VR multiplayer game set in a medieval fantasy world. Users can engage in multiplayer experiences that revolve around a wide range of activities such as cooking, crafting, PvE, mining, blacksmithing, and carpentry. The game relies on procedural generation, a method to combine computer and human-generated content on a large scale for mass content creation as its key differentiator.The company generates revenue via 1) sales of its game on the Meta Quest Store, priced at USD 10 and 2) sales of in-game cosmetics, ranging from USD 10-80. Users can also show further support to the game devs via monthly donations of USD 10, with players receiving in-game currency (for the purchase of in-game cosmetics), exclusive in-game discounts and the ability to create a private PC server.In April 2024, the company disclosed that it was developing a dark fantasy-themed VR exclusive game, codenamed ‘Project 2’. Key customers and partnershipsAccording to data from MMO Stats, The company was estimated to have a total of ~850,000 players as of January 2024.Funding and financialsIn its most recent funding round (January 2022), the company raised USD 12.4 million in seed funding co-led by Makers Fund and Andreessen Horowitz. The round valued the company at USD 62 million and the fresh funds were expected to be used to expand its team, create new partnerships, and further develop its technology.

Alta

BitDegree is a cryptocurrency learning platform that offers Learnoverse, a gamified and interactive crypto learning metaverse powered by the blockchain, where users will be able to create their own avatars, collect NFTs exclusive to Learnoverse, explore a virtual world (CryptoDegree City) that is divided into topic-based districts with each building representing a specific educational course on crypto, earn tokens through learning, and eventually obtain crypto-degrees. Course creators will be able to purchase NFT land on the platform and create NFT buildings to represent their courses, and its novel tokenomics will allow instructors to earn from their courses without charging the user.Key customers and partnershipsIn September 2022, the company partnered with web3 mobile development infrastructure provider Mirror World to create a course about Web3 gaming within Learnoverse, and NFT platform Lympo, to enable creators to mint NFTs within Leanoverse.Funding and financialsBitDegree raised over USD 1 million in funding from Japanese/Singaporean venture investor Mistletoe in June 2022. The funds were raised to create innovative methods of learning blockchain, crypto, and Web3-related topics within Learnoverse.

BitDegree

Star Atlas is a space-themed metaverse gaming platform built on the Solana blockchain and Unreal Engine 5. The game allows users to interact, organize, and explore unknown regions in space, alongside joining factions and harvesting resources. The platform includes assets that are tokenized, which provides users ownership over these unique assets and enables them to generate income through these assets. Star Atlas' in-game economy and governance is run using its native currencies, POLIS and ATLAS, and, as of May 2022, the platform had nearly 100,000 players.In May 2024, the company announced that it would launch Star Atlas on mobile Android and iOS by the end of the year.The company also developed the SAGE Labs browser-based open-world game in August 2023, which focuses on deep space resource extraction and crafting.Key customers and partnershipsIn July 2023, the company partnered with blockchain indexer Hello Moon, aiming to bolster the scalability and robustness of Star Atlas real-time data handling capabilities, effectively replacing its proprietary in-house solution. Additionally, the company partnered with Web3 company MetaGravity in the same month to scale its concurrent player count on a single server to 30,000 from 5,000.Funding and financialsIn December 2021, Star Atlas received USD 3 million in funding from Animoca Brands in the form of a purchase commitment of Star Atlas NFT spaceships. The NFT spaceships sold to Animoca Brands were part of Star Atlas’ Galactic Asset Offering (GAO) and all the revenue from asset sales from its GAO was expected to be used to further develop the Star Atlas metaverse.

Star Atlas

Platforms that offer collaborative 2D and 3D environments for enterprise and education-related use cases

Platforms that facilitate entertainment-focused virtual events and concerts

Platforms that focus on multiplayer gaming experiences in virtual worlds

Platforms that focus on social interaction, experience creation, and virtual land purchases

Platforms that enable the creation of avatars that are used as digital identities in metaverse platforms

Platforms that offer virtual worlds for multiplayer social gaming experiences enable users to create experiences and conduct transactions (e.g. buying virtual land)

Some solutions in the gaming platforms segment use AI for non-playable characters (NPCs)

Some gaming and social metaverses are decentralized, with features such as play-to-earn and NFT minting

Social gaming and pure-play social platforms facilitate virtual land transactions using crypto

Most solutions in this hub use AR/VR for virtual events, enterprise, and social/gaming use cases

Virtual worlds and web3 are the primary enabling technologies for the metaverse industry

Work platforms offer virtual spaces for enterprise use cases

<div>
 
 ObEN's platform allows users to create their own digital twin by uploading a picture of themselves to the platform. Virtual celebrities, gaming, entertainment, and live streaming are noted as key uses of ObEN avatars. The avatars are designed to make interaction easy and aim to enhance the naturalness and simplicity of the virtual assistant or digital character. Once the avatar is created, users can live-stream and produce videos by transferring content to ObEN's real-time content creation platform.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Inworld AI provides an engine to build AI characters for gaming, the metaverse, VR/AR, and immersive experiences.
 
</div>

Inworld AI

<div>
 
 Soul Machines uses a cloud-based platform called Human OS to create digital humans that are highly realistic in appearance and behavior. This is achieved through the integration of various technologies such as its patented Digital Brain and Autonomous Animation Engine as well as third-party tools like conversational AI, sentiment analytics, and data integration. The Digital Brain is capable of contextualizing and adapting to different situations and can animate realistic human-like behaviors on its own.
 
</div>

Soul Machines

<div>
 
 DeepBrainAI allows the creation of digital humans for various purposes: business, recruitment, service, education, and personal. The company offers 100+ AI avatar templates to choose from and speech in 55+ languages. It also offers several digital avatar products such as AI Avatar (digital avatars for retail, banking, education, etc.), AI Human (creation of custom digital avatars), AI Studio (for creating videos), and AI Interview (digital avatars for HR tasks such as recruitment). In March 2023, the company launched its GenAI video synthesis solution, AI Studios 2.0.
 
</div>

DeepBrain AI

<div>
 
 Digital Domain is a visual effects and digital production company. Its Digital Human Group applies advanced creation techniques and proprietary technology for feature ﬁlms, real-time capture for live venue events, futuristic gaming experiences, and mobile and next-generation interactive digital human rendering.
 
</div>

Digital Domain

Digital humans that engage in two-way conversations for customer service and employee training

Digital humans that deliver responsive interactions for virtual events, social media, and entertainment

Interactive digital humans for applications in education, fashion, sports, and others

Digital humans for one-way customer and employee communications, including presentations, training modules, or informational videos, and the like

Digital humans as characters in movies, news reporting, virtual events, and television shows without two-way user interaction

Digital humans as characters for video games without two-way user interaction

Digital humans for applications in fashion, education, sports, and others without two-way user interaction

Several digital humans are integrated with GenAI models

NLP is used by digital humans to understand, process, and generate natural language

AI and ML are used in digital humans to process data and generate responses

Digital humans can be deployed in the metaverse for a variety of purposes, such as virtual customer service, virtual events, and virtual social interactions.

ObEN

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