MixRift, a mixed reality game studio, today announced it’s secured a $1.6 million pre-seed investment round, something the team says will be used to develop more MR games.

The funding round was led by Outsized Ventures, Underline Ventures, and SOSV. According to CrunchBase data, MixRift received an undisclosed round from SOSV in May 2024.

Founded in 2023, the team is led by Bobby Voicu, David Pripas and Andrei Vaduva. Voicu, who is CEO, previously launched mobile games studio Mavenhut; Pripas is an official Meta AR Partner and the company’s CPO, and Vaduva is the company’s CTO.

Known for its indie XR titles Hell Horde (2024) on Quest and Fractured (2024) on both Quest and Apple Vision Pro, MixRift says it’s working to create the Angry Birds of mixed reality—something that’s easy to pick up but hard to put down.

“We’re at the very beginning of what mixed reality could do for gamers,” Voicu says. “We know there is a huge untapped market, and our founding team knows what it takes to create the games that hook those players in. This puts us in a unique position to capitalise on the opportunity.”

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MixRift says it will use the investment to continue its development and plans to release further titles later in 2024, noting that it’s focusing on sticky game mechanics over “specific titles” to best identify what resonates with audiences.

“We are committed to rapidly prototyping games, getting them into the market, and gathering real user feedback as quickly as possible,” Voicu says. “We use those insights to improve titles that connect with audiences and replace those that don’t. This investment gives us the support we need to take that approach and demonstrates experienced, knowledgeable backers’ buy-in to our philosophy.”

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.