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.”
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.