Sandbox VR, the location-based VR attraction, announced an additional $11 million in funding from some of the biggest household names in entertainment and investment.

Sandbox VR says in a press statement that their latest investment brings their total funds to $83 million, including the Series A round earlier this year that netted the company $68 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Alibaba, Floodgate Ventures, Stanford University, Triplepoint Capital, and CRCM.

The most recent funding round was led by David Sacks of Craft Ventures and the Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund, with additional investors including Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Will Smith, Honda Keisuke, Dreamers Fund, Michael Ovitz, and Kevin Durant & Rich Kleiman of Thirty Five Ventures.

“We believe that VR is finally ready to take off as a mass-market phenomenon in malls, where it can be optimized for a social experience,” said David Sacks, co-founder and general partner at Craft Ventures. “We chose the Sandbox team because of their background in game design; their VR experiences have a level of interactivity — with both the VR world and other players — that we couldn’t find elsewhere. We believe that Sandbox VR is poised to become the first VR experience for millions of consumers around the world.”

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The company currently runs centers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Macau, and Singapore. Locations in Austin, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and San Diego are marked as “coming soon” on the company’s website.

The company says a total of 16 total locations are however planned to open by the end of 2020.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Graham J ⭐️

    Talk about chasing the short term. This is like investing in arcades in the 80s. Gangbusters for a while, but ghost towns now.

    • Arcades only emulated the home experience.

      Can you imaging everyone trying to emulate a VR arcade in their rooms?

      Look up VOID and see :)

      • drowhunter

        what are you talking about?

        • kalqlate

          He’s saying that former arcades were built with stationary machines that could as well function in the home. Differently, VR arcades can be HUGE and not possible to function in a home. Therefore, this investment has a real chance of adding to the growth of this VR form of “amusement park”.

        • Also consoles did it better than Arcades.

          • drowhunter

            im still not sure why you brought this up. The article also seems pointless. “Big stars invest money in VR Arcade Startup”.do…so? And consoles being better than arcades only happened towards the late 90s when 3d systems arrived Leading to their demise (in north america, Japan they are still making new games every day). before then Arcades were miles beyond what a genesis or snes could do.

          • Not sure why you even commented in the first place.

            You know nothing about what they investing in, really, so your also seems pointless as well :)

    • kalqlate

      ALL technology and entertainment modes have their days in the sun, and of course, they don’t last forever as new modes supercede them. Not only common sense but reality.

    • drowhunter

      yeah but its fitting really. VR is very much in its “arcade” phase they are still bushy tailed and bright-eyed about the seemingly new and limitless possibilities of the medium. Once this phase is over we will start to seek more meaningful and deep experiences that Arcades wont be able to deliver and then VR arcades will die off

      • Cant imagine what would beat VR arcades other than more advanced VR arcades.

        Nothing done at home by average users shall beat it.

        And arcades shall be the stepping stone towards what comes next.

  • Leon Jimenez

    In LA we have 3 Voids and now one Sandbox Vr. The Void is way more creative and mass appealing than SandboxVR which is a just a multiplayer stationary wave shooter. They are meant to pop up anywhere, paint a green wall and hand the guests rifles and haptic vests and shoot waves if whatever. The Void has you moving through rooms, interacting with puzzles, stepping on different textures with vibrating floots, smelling the environment, feeling heat and wind. Not sure why Sandbox is getting so much funding other than good sales people pitching the investors. Maybe with the money they can develop something creative that isn’t a wave shooter.

  • sara laurence

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