VR Events And Social Startup HIKKY Lands $57 Million To Ramp Up Metaverse Plans

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HIKKY fundraise shows there’s no business but the metaverse

Quick read

➨ HIKKY has raised about $57 million in funding to accelerate its metaverse business

➨ The funding is from an initial series A round and the startup, based in Tokyo, Japan, is considering a further move for additional investment as part of the same round

➨ The startup’s primary areas of focus are the Vket series of VR events held on VRChat and the browser-based VR events and social platform Vket Cloud, which is hardware-agnostic

The story

HIKKY, an organiser of virtual reality (VR) events in the process of developing its own virtual platform, has raised about $57 million in funding to accelerate its metaverse business.

The funding is from an initial series A round and the startup, based in Tokyo, Japan, is considering a further move for additional investment, with the aim of maintaining its autonomy following completion.

The identities of its series A investors were not disclosed, but HIKKY did name partner NTT Docomo in a press release, confirming that it will continue to provide the Japanese mobile network operator with extended reality (XR) services, technologies, and content.

HIKKY intends to use the funding to expand its VR services both at home and abroad, while strengthening the company.

The startup’s primary areas of focus are the Vket series of VR events held on VRChat and the browser-based VR events and social platform Vket Cloud, which is hardware-agnostic.

Vket Cloud provides virtual spaces and immersive content creation tools that users can access by web link rather than a dedicated app. It also supports multiplayer mode, allowing users to communicate in the same space using voice or text chat.

Meta (formerly Facebook), Engage XR and Microsoft.

Each is either working on its own metaverse platform or intent on supplying tools that will make a wider virtual space or series of interconnected spaces possible.

Pushing its own vision in Asia for virtual commerce, Yasushi Funakoshi, chief executive officer of HIKKY, says the $57 million in funding will help the company to “accelerate our metaverse business”, in partnership with key infrastructure providers such as NTT Docomo and NTT Group.

Funakoshi adds: “We are extremely grateful to all the creators who have supported us, and to the visitors and companies who have taken part in Vket events.”

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Images: HIKKY