FOV Ventures is a newly formed venture capital firm which plans to invest in early-stage metaverse startups. The firm says it has raised an initial $18.1 million as part of its first fund.

Founding partners David Haynes and Petri Rajahalme announced this month FOV Ventures, a Finland-based early-stage VC firm through which the duo plans to focus on Europe-based metaverse startups.

The firm says it has raised $18.1 million (€16.5 million) so far and plans to cap its first fund at $27.5 million (€25 million). Through the fund the firm plans to invest $274K–550K (€250K–500K) in up to 25 companies in pre-seed and seed stages.

The company says it is looking to fund startups working specifically in the areas of ‘Avatars & Identity’, ‘Retail & Digital Commerce’, ‘Immersive Social’, ‘Future of Work’, and ‘Tools & Infrastructure’.

“The metaverse represents a major expansion of today’s Internet, becoming more immersive, built with new tools such as real-time 3D game engines, and spanning an increasingly blurred line between the virtual and physical world,” the firm says.

FOV Ventures founding partners, Dave Haynes (left) and Petri Rajahalme (right) | Image courtesy FOV Ventures

Both founding partners have backgrounds in venture funding, according to the firm. Dave Haynes was previously part of Vive X, HTC’s VR investment fund, and the Europe-focused VC firm Seedcamp. Haynes purportedly led investments in LIV, Maze Theory, and Bodyswaps during his tenure at Vive X. Petri Rajahalme was Managing Director at the Nordic XR Startups fund, where he is said to have led investments in eight XR companies, among other work in the XR investment space prior to the formation of FOV Ventures.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • ViRGiN

    Never heard about FOV Ventures, but clearly they are already doing 1000000000000000000000 times more than Valve SteamVR ever did.

    • Jerald Doerr

      You can’t compare a fiscal controller + Finger tracking to a 100% finger tracker or vice versa.

      • ViRGiN

        You’ve said a lot while saying nothing. What do you mean?

        • Jerald Doerr

          These gloves are not controllers + finger trackers, and you’re trying to suggest they’re better than anything Valve has made. How about you comper a truck with a car. Daaa,

          • ViRGiN

            What are you smoking? Gloves aren’t even mentioned once in this article. It’s about funding metaverse startups. Raised 18 million so far. That’s technically 18 million times more than Valve has ever done for any developer in vr ever.
            Nobody supports valve controllers anyway, it’s a dead gimmick, other than a handful of titles – pun intended

  • Jerald Doerr

    Looks amazing! Hopefully, it tracts the location and rotation of the wrist, or it’s almost useless.. I keep trying to figure out why they demo this way, but can’t??