futureversea crypto and gaming startup, has secured $54 million in Series A funding to support its expansion into the metaverse space.
The financing round was led by the venture capital firm 10T holdingswith the participation of ripple labsthe creator of XRP Ledgerthe company said in a recent press release.
Futureverse said it plans to use the funds for research and development purposes, as well as to advance its gaming-focused blockchain, called The Root Network.
The root network is compatible with the Ethereum virtual machine and incorporates XRP ledger integration, allowing users to use XRP and its non-fungible (NFT) tokens.
Also, Futureverse has plans to develop more blockchain games in the future.
“The metaverse has the potential to transform the way humans interact and collaborate with one another and improve our experiences in a number of different spheres, including gaming, payments, asset management and more,” Aaron McDonald and Shara Senderoff, co-founders of Futureverse, said in a statement.
Futurevese is a platform of 11 companies ranging from game studios and entities enabling web3 payments to blockchain startups providing the tools for brands and developers to more easily create content for the metaverse.
The company was formed by the merger of eight companies at the end of 2022 and has since assimilated three more.
Futurevese aims to combine AI and Blockchain technology
The overall goal of Futureverse is to combine artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology to establish the necessary infrastructure for a seamless metaverse experience.
Futureverse has already released two sports-related games.
In April, they released World Cup AI League, a mobile soccer game for Android and iOS that incorporates AI-powered gameplay.
Although the game does not feature real-life soccer stars, it offers colorful and cartoonish characters whose actions are controlled by AI.
Additionally, Futureverse collaborated with the estate of the late boxer Muhammad Ali to create Muhammad Ali: The Next Legends, an AI game using NFTs.
The players act as coaches and make strategic decisions for their boxers. Each NFT Boxer must be paired with an NFT “AI Brain” to determine its behavior.
Meanwhile, the recent funding comes amid growing skepticism towards the metaverse concept, which has been quite the buzz in recent years.
However, Ripple Labs President Monica Long said she still believes in the Futureverse vision.
“While we are in the early stages of what a project like this can achieve, and really the broader concept of the metaverse, we at Ripple are excited to contribute to the foundational infrastructure layer and provide real utility to end users of the open metaverse,” Long said in a statement.
The metaverse has been a topic of intense debate in the world of technology, particularly as many of the big supporters of the idea have recently backtracked on their ambitions.
Earlier this year, entertainment giant Disney announced it was scrapping its metaverse division as part of broader layoffs that will affect up to 7,000 employees.
Besides, Microsoft has discontinued its Industrial Metaverse Core team this year, a four-month project aimed at fostering the use of the metaverse in industrial settings.
