Wolf3D, the Estonian startup behind web-based avatar creator Ready Player Me, has closed a $13 million funding round. The company says it will use the funds to further build out its avatar creation tools and eventually allow developers to earn money through the sale of in-game assets and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Ready Player Me studio Wolf3D has secured a $13 million Series A funding round, which was led by Wise and Teleport co-founders Taavet+Sten, and features participation from GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner, Samsung Next, NordicNinja, Konvoy Ventures, and others. The news was first reported by Venture Beat.
Read Player Me allows anyone to create and customize their own avatar, which can then be imported into social VR platforms such as VRChat, Spatial, LIV, MeetinVR, and more.
Working on both desktop and mobile devices, Ready Player Me presents an easy way of doing so, letting you use the same skin across multiple platforms—some 900+ apps and games now, the company says.
With the fresh funding, Wolf3D says in a blog post that it will build out its custom content creation tools, invest in avatar art through additional styles and body types, and improve avatar performance.
In addition to building APIs and SDKs to improve the developer experience, the studio says it will also be focusing on making Ready Player Me a “revenue generator for developers” by allowing third-party devs to sell in-game assets and NFTs—cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain and can be easily bought, sold and traded.
The company hasn’t said when it will roll out its monetization strategy, however it lists it as “coming soon.”
In the meantime, Wolf3D says its scaling up from 30 people today to over 70, with multiple roles offered across Europe and the US. The latest funding round brings the company’s lifetime outside investment to $16.5 million, following a $2.1 million seed round in July 2020.
