Social VR platform Rec Room has sealed another big funding round to close out the year. The Seattle-based startup today announced it’s secured a new $145 million financing round, bringing the company’s total valuation to $3.5 billion.

The funding round was led by Coatue Management, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, and Madrona Venture Group.

This comes on the heels of a $100 million raise in March, which at the time pushed the company’s valuation to a stunning $1.25 billion—the first of its kind to get ‘unicorn’ status. The most recent round brings the company’s lifetime financing to $294 million, pushing it now to a $3.5 billion valuation.

First released on Steam in 2016 for both VR and flatscreen play, Rec Room has evolved a great deal over the years, taking it from social VR platform that focused solely on first-party content and minigames to something much more akin to Roblox, including a heavy focus on user-generated content—over 12 million user-generated rooms now, the company says.

Although first-party content is still a big anchor, such as its recently released ‘Rec Rally’ mini-game, users can also make real-world cash for creating cool and interesting stuff.

Things like in-game objects and mini-games underpin Rec Room’s budding economy, which kicked off this year through a creator program. Through it, trusted creators can sell in-game creations for the game’s premium token currency, which can then be converted back to fiat cash.

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“It’s been amazing to watch Rec Room grow from a tiny collection of mini-games into a global platform with millions of experiences built by the community. The platform has become a place where people can come together to form meaningful connections, build communities, and share their creativity,” said Nick Fajt, Rec Room co-founder and CEO. “There’s still so much more we want to do, and as we head into 2022, we’re excited to build more experiences, expand to new platforms, invest in best in class trust and safety systems, and continue to expand our creator tools.”

Over the past years the platform has expanded a great deal in search of the widest possible audience. Rec Room, a free app, not only serves VR users on Meta Quest, PSVR, and SteamVR headsets, it also offers cross-play to traditional gaming platforms and mobile devices, such as Android, iOS, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC via Steam, and more.

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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.
  • VRFriend

    These valuations are crazy. 3.5b for what?

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    • benz145

      Where are these numbers from?

      Rec Room has a functioning creator-economy which investors are quite interested in.

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    • But let’ be honest here, Rec Room is much higher quality in terms of presentation and polish than VRChat, certainly in anything I’ve experienced. One feels like a clunky, fan-made, glorified chatroom for modders and the like, and the other feels like a pretty dang polished and well-realised social app that is growing its own economy and the like and is on course to become one of the proper “metaverses” in VR. At least as I see it.

      • Totius

        I actually feel the opposite. I prefere much more VRChat

        • ViRGiN

          Your words are meaningless, if you aren’t backing it up by any justification.
          VR Chat is literally just a chat room with custom avatars, everything else is extremely janky with no polish ever for years. What’s so interesting in it?

    • ViRGiN

      vrchat has broken ass weebs and furries with 7000 old girl avatars; rec room has youngsters with relatively care-full parents who are willing to make their kids happy.

      only vrchat orthodox nerds thinks vrchat has any real saying into the future of metaverse. most of meta-metaverse haters are addicts of vrchat clusterfuck.

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  • Ad

    This is where I’m going to put aside my hate for facebook and say that RecRoom worries me. Something worth this much and in this genre can’t be free from the rampant exploitation and negligence affecting Roblox. Has anyone looked into RecRoom and whether it’s safe, fair, and non exploitative (someone who isn’t an XR evangelist or friends with RecRoom)?

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    • Well, I’ve certainly never picked any of that kind of thing up in the times I’ve tried it. It just felt like a fun social app with lots of games and activities and customisation and user-created content. But now it has a proper functioning economy where people can buy and sell stuff, so I guess that’s ripe for exploitation. So far though, all good imo.

  • If they keep going like this, these guys are probably going to have one of the proper “metaverses” in VR.

    • ViRGiN

      The people who are actually interested in “real” metaverse aren’t really even a VR users yet.

      Rec Room is childs play, Vrchat is for furries and weebs, NeosVR is for nerds. There is not a single metaverse alike for normal, common people, but it is the Horizon that shapes up to be the one, but it’s taking time. That’s not a problem, years passed and the apps mentioned above 100% did not change their userbase.

  • $3.5B for what has started by being a VR app? WOW, this is amazing!

  • ivan

    It is crazy

    Seems like Roblox sucess made inverstors to throw money in such projects at every corner
    There are some huge bulbbles at market waiting to burst