"Shark" who invested in Axie Infinity pours capital into virtual universe Make in Vietnam

Developing virtual universes (metaverse) is a trend of many large technology corporations in the world. Recently, Facebook even changed its name to Meta as an affirmation of its determination to build its own virtual universe.

Metaverse or virtual universe can be understood as a world outside the physical universe and exists parallel to the real world. It is where people have a virtual self to interact with each other in a virtual environment created by computers.

In Vietnam, projects related to the metaverse have also flourished recently. Among them, the most mentioned is Axie Infinity. This is a game where users can control Axies (characters) in the game to fight each other, thereby earning reward points and being able to exchange them for cryptocurrencies.

Metaverse virtual universes are the new trend of the technology market.

Sky Mavis - the company that developed Axie Infinity later became a tech unicorn when it was valued at 3 billion USD. Besides Axie, there are many Make in Vietnam metaverse projects such as Faraland, Sipher, Elpis Battle... The common point of these projects is that they all develop virtual universes revolving around the game world and this is also the core of their ecosystem.

Among the Vietnamese Metaverse projects, there is one project that chooses a different direction by focusing on developing different spaces in a virtual universe. This startup is known as Meta Spatial.

To do that, the company developed a technology that allows users to upload their images and create a virtual character. In each space in the virtual universe, users can play games, attend concerts, watch virtual movies... through virtual reality and augmented reality technologies (VR/AR/MR/XR).

It is noteworthy that Meta Spatial has been in development for 6 months, much earlier than the time Facebook changed its name to Meta to exploit the virtual universe market.

Different lands in Meta Spatial Moon, a virtual space of the larger virtual universe Meta Spatial

According to the reporter’s source, Meta Spatial has recently received capital from two big names in the venture capital world, Animoca Brands and LD Capital. These are two investment funds considered “sharks” in the venture capital world.

LD Capital is a Chinese venture capital firm with strengths in blockchain, securities, investment and stock trading. LD Capital's size once reached 1 billion USD.

With Animoca Brands, this is a company specializing in gaming and venture capital. Amonica was founded in 2014 in Hong Kong with a focus on investing in new technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Recently, in addition to Meta Spatial, Animoca Brands has invested heavily in metaverse projects such as Sandbox (total capitalization of 2.4 billion USD), Alien Worlds (total capitalization of nearly 300 million USD). Notably, Amonica's portfolio and partners also include Sky Mavis - the company behind the hit game Axie Infinity.

In 2019, the fund led the first round of funding, worth $1.5 million, to invest in Sky Mavis. Animoca Brands later signed an agreement to subscribe to $420,000 of the gaming company’s shares. In its most recent funding round, Sky Mavis raised an additional $152 million and was valued at $3 billion.

With the interest of Animoca Brands and LD Capital, it can be seen that Vietnam's startup Meta Spatial is being highly appreciated by international investment funds. Therefore, we have the right to hope that Vietnam will have a new technology unicorn from the virtual universe trend, just like what Axie Infinity has done. Of course, to reach that stage, this startup will need to try and make a lot of effort.

According to Vietnamnet