Over the previous a number of years I’ve coated my fair proportion of upstart avatar firms that had been all chasing the identical dream — constructing out a customizable platform for a digital persona that gained large adoption throughout video games and digital areas. Few of these startups I’ve coated previously are nonetheless round. However by netting a string of profitable partnerships with movie star musicians, LA-based Genies has come nearer than any startup earlier than it to realizing the total imaginative and prescient of a wide-reaching avatar platform.
The corporate introduced right this moment that they’ve closed a $65 million Collection B led by Mary Meeker’s agency Bond. NEA, Breyer Capital, Tull Funding Group, NetEase, Dapper Labs and Coinbase Ventures additionally participated within the deal. Mary Meeker will likely be becoming a member of the Genies board. The corporate didn’t disclose the Genies’ most up-to-date valuation.
This funding comes at an inflection level for the four-year-old firm, evidenced by the investments from NBA High Shot-maker Dapper Labs and crypto big Coinbase. As introduced final week, the corporate is rolling out an NFT platform on Dapper Labs’ Movement blockchain, partnering intently with the startup, which will likely be constructing out the backend for a Genies avatar equipment storefront. Like Dapper Labs has leveraged its unique offers with sports activities leagues to ship NFTs with official backing, Genies is planning to capitalize on its partnerships with celebrities in its roster, together with Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Cardi B and others to create a platform for purchasing and buying and selling avatar equipment en masse.
In October, the corporate introduced a model partnership with Gucci, opening the startup to a different massive market alternative.
Genies’ enterprise has largely targeted on leveraging high-profile partnerships to offer its entertainer shoppers a digital presence that may boost what they’re sharing on social media and past. As they’ve rolled out avatar creation to all customers by beta cellular apps, Genies has been specializing in one of many extra specific goals of the avatar firms earlier than it; constructing out a broad community of avatar customers and a broad community of suitable platforms by its SDK.
Picture Credit: Genies
“An avatar is a automobile to have the ability to showcase extra of your genuine self,” Genies CEO Akash Nigam tells . “It’s not restricted by real-world constraints, it’s an alter-ego character.”
Traits within the NFT world have supplied new realms of exploration for Genies, however so have broader pandemic-era developments which have pushed extra customers to wholly digital areas the place they socialize and join. “The pandemic accelerated every thing,” Nigam says.
Nigam emphasizes that regardless of the key alternative its upcoming NFT platform will current, Genies remains to be an avatar firm first-and-foremost, not an NFT startup, although he does say he’s believes crypto-backed digital items are going to be round for a very long time. He has few doubts that the present surroundings round digital items helped juice Genies’ funding spherical, which he says was “6-8X oversubscribed” and was an opportunistic play for the startup, which “might have gone years with out having to lift.”
The corporate says their crypto market will launch within the coming months, as early as this summer season.
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