Uncovered among recent regulatory filings, VR metaverse company High Fidelity has raised $22 million in new funding.

The company, which has reportedly raised $17.45 million across four prior venture investments, has raised a new round of venture capital to the tune of $22 million, reports the Wall Street Journal. High Fidelity CEO Philip Rosedale confirmed to New World Notes that the investment was led by IDG Capital and new investor Breyer Capital.

Rosedale was the founder and former head of Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, which was also an attempt at a metaverse-like ecosystem in the pre-modern VR era. After leaving Linden Lab years ago, Rosedale formed High Fidelity aiming to harness the oncoming wave of immersive VR, and the learnings gleaned from Second Life.

High Fidelity is a foundation for a persistent metaverse which allows users to host, build, and join interconnected virtual worlds. The company says the extent of their platform is “limitless” thanks to a distributed-computing model that crowdsources processing power from users to run complex simulations. The app is currently in open beta with support for the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and normal monitors (including PC and Mac).

See Also: First Glimpse of Linden Lab’s Next-gen Virtual World, Project Sansar
An early glimpse of Linden Labs’ ‘Sansar’

Linden Lab has since announced Sansar, a next-generation social world that’s built from the ground up for virtual reality. A curious happenstance indeed; Rosedale’s High Fidelity appears in direct competition with another company he founded.

Back in its prime, Linden Lab had reportedly raised $19 million in venture investments. High Fidelity’s new round eclipses that figure, now with some $40 million raised to date. Meanwhile, similarly positioned social VR app AltspaceVR has closed some $18 million in venture funding, while a smattering of smaller social VR apps like VRChat and JanusVR have raised around $1.5 million each.

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With High Fidelity’s latest investment, the stakes for the metaverse and social VR space are growing larger. Meanwhile, the shadow of Facebook looms.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Nigerian Wizard

    That’s a lot of fucking money

  • Sponge Bob

    the real question is: who needs this shit ?

    I don’t

    • Shivermeballsack

      Nobody either. As of now it’s a glorified VR Garry’s Mod shot in the dark. They would need (from the amount of funding) Warcraft levels of playerbase to return profit in the deep, deep future, if they even release it.

  • Me

    I gave it a try when it launched. It was probably the weirdest thing I’ve tried on the Vive, like if you’ve entered a sort of neo-retro asian babel tower with people doing all sorts of crazy stuff and hearing disconnected voices in all languages around you talking about stuff you couldn’t see. Oh and I was blue like a na’vi on drugs.

    The question remains: why ?

  • Foreign Devil

    Philip Rosdale is sure good at marketing to investors! So far whatever they have looks real rough and not user friendly.

  • Yore VR

    Wonder what the ROI will be!