The startup formed out of a merger of 11 different companies.
(Bloomberg) — An unusual company straddling a range of industries has raised $54 million in fresh funding from investors. The company is Futureverse, a combination of 11 different startups from sectors including blockchain, artificial intelligence, the metaverse and gaming.
Crypto investment firm 10T Holdings led the Series A round for Futureverse, the company plans to announce Tuesday. Other investors included Ripple Labs Inc., the digital asset company that was recently the subject of a high-profile ruling that could impact crypto regulation. Futureverse co-founders Aaron McDonald and Shara Senderoff declined to disclose the startup’s valuation.
Tumult in the crypto market over the last year made fundraising a tricky process for the company, McDonald said, and the massive merger was inherently complicated. Futureverse began as a tie-up of eight companies in late 2022, and later assimilated three more.
McDonald said Futureverse laid off about 20% of its staff as it restructured, and that it currently has more than 250 employees. The company is now in a more competitive position given the market headwinds, he said, adding that the consolidation gives it “a lot more stability and resilience to kind of weather that storm.”
One of Futureverse’s core missions is to provide the tech infrastructure underlying users’ experience in the metaverse, Senderoff said. The company is best known for FLUF World, a collection of nonfungible tokens where each NFT is a cartoon rabbit with unique traits, as well as AI League, a mobile soccer game licensed by FIFA.
Many of the technologies that Futureverse touches have come under fire in recent months. For example, NFTs saw monthly global sales volumes plunge 38% to $653 million in June compared with the same period last year, according to data provider CryptoSlam. And the value of many cryptocurrencies has fallen.
McDonald said that blockchain is an important part of Futureverse’s business, especially because the technology can give users more control over their digital identity and data, but he stressed that it’s not all the company does. “I don’t want people to think of us as a blockchain company, because that’s like 10% of our tech stack,” he said.
The metaverse has also lost some of its luster. Once a ubiquitous buzzword that prompted Facebook to change its name to Meta Platforms Inc., the excitement over new digital worlds has subsided as the technology industry has turned its attention to AI. However, McDonald said that the metaverse and AI will go hand in hand: “The hype now, if anything, is underplaying the impact.”
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