TheWaveVR, the studio behind the eponymous music-centric social VR platform, today announced the closure of a $6 million Series A funding round led by RRE Ventures. TheWaveVR also opened their new Los Angeles office today, where they plan to collaborate with artists and musicians on what they say will be “a number of high profile VR concerts this year.”
With this latest infusion of capital, the company’s total funding comes to $10 million, which they say in a press release will allow them to expand the app’s community tools and port to additional VR platforms.
The round includes venture capital firms such as Upfront Ventures, KPCB, Greycroft VR Gaming Tracker Fund, The VR Fund, and more, with participation from strategic investors including Andy Ross from OK Go; Alex Chung, co-founder and CEO of Giphy; and Matt Brimer, co-founder of General Assembly and Daybreaker. Alice Lloyd George, investor at RRE, joins the company’s board.
To seal the deal, the studio used their content creation tool, ‘Wave Builder’, to create a fully interactive VR experience to pitch VC’s within the TheWaveVR platform. In true VR fashion, TheWaveVR and RRE signed the Series A term sheet in VR.
The funding round follows a successful collaboration with Warner Bros. that brought to life the dance club from Steven Spielberg’s film adaption of Ready Player One.
“The VR ecosystem is approaching a tipping point with the release of ‘Ready Player One’. With hardware prices coming down, stand-alone headsets like Oculus Go and Vive Focus on the horizon, and developers discovering best use cases, VR is on a sure path to become mainstream,” said Adam Arrigo, TheWaveVR CEO and co-founder. “We spent last year nailing down the format for these fully interactive concerts and proved people love our experience; this year we’re focused on how that content gets created and shared.”
TheWaveVR app has played host to tailormade VR experiences such as a trippy multiuser world built to debut ToKiMONSTA’s album Lune Rouge, and concerts featuring Heavy Grinder, Ninja Tune artist Ash Koosha’s AKTUAL, Strangeloop’s N-FOLD, and Kill the Noise.
The app is available on Steam (U.S. residents only) targeting SteamVR-compatible headsets including HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Window “Mixed Reality” VR headsets. Considering CEO Adam Arrigo’s take on where VR is heading, we wouldn’t be surprised if standalone headsets weren’t already in TheWaveVR’s sights.