The first UK Metaverse Startup Landscape

Earlier this month we (Remagine Ventures) teamed up with Taylor Wessing (a leading UK law firm specialising in tech) on “Into the Metaverse”, a joint event to discuss the opportunities in gaming, crypto/web3 and Metaverse. We wanted to share the perspectives of startups, platforms, investors and brands. You can find a lot more information, including videos from the event in this dedicated Metaverse page.

In addition, we put together what I believe is the first landscape of UK startups building the Metaverse. Together, we mapped 89 companies, that collectively raised over £2 billion in venture capital across consumer experiences, enabling technologies and infrastructure.

Notable companies in the landscape include:

• Blippar – the AR creation platform for consumers and brands to create virtual experiences in the real world

• Framestore – a leading VR and visual effects studio
• Condense Reality – the Bristol team which takes the complexity of streaming live events into the Metaverse
• Anything World – a 3D creation platform, leveraging AI for simplified rigging
• LandVault – the largest Metaverse ‘real estate’ company, working with brands to create immersive experiences
• Hundo – a social impact Web3 platform designed to help Gen-z understand the future of learning and work

And many, many more. If by some reason your company was left out, please scan the QR code and we will include you in the next version that will be published in Q1 2023.

The 2022 Immersive Economy UK report published in October this year, puts a spotlight on the state of XR startups in the UK:

1. The immersive economy has grown considerably in recent years. There are an estimated 2,106 immersive technology companies in the UK, representing an 83% growth in the last five years.
2. UK XR startups generated over $1.4 billion in revenue in 2022. Main use cases include education, health, entertainment and gaming
3. Access to finance and skills remain the key barriers to industry growth.
4. The pandemic was generally viewed to have been a net positive for the industry.

Looking ahead

New technologies, like Generative AI (which I covered extensively on VC Cafe) create exciting opportunities to scale creativity and content creation. It will not only reduce the barriers and increase the speed of creation, but also reduce the cost and democratise the tools required to be a game developer, virtual goods designer or virtual world builder. A16Z called it ‘Creativity as an app‘. We’re starting from text, images and video, but the rapid advancements in this space will soon enable the creation of AI generated virtual worlds as you can see below:

In our first fund, we focused our investment activity on Israeli related startups only and we’ve been fortunate to work with talented, motivated, technical founders addressing some of the biggest challenges in this space. From 2023, I’m excited for Remagine Ventures to expand our investment scope to UK startups as well and I look forward to connecting with founders building in this space in the months to come.

More resources:

Eze is managing partner of Remagine Ventures, a seed fund investing in ambitious founders at the intersection of tech, entertainment, gaming and commerce with a spotlight on Israel.

I’m a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google’s first physical hub for startups.

I’m also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we’ve built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.

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