China-based metaverse technology developer Xmov announced on Wednesday it has closed two funding rounds including a $110m series C co-led by internet and telecommunications group SoftBank.
Venture capital fund Fresh Capital and investment firm Jinsha Capital co-led the company’s $20m series B round, investing alongside Sequoia Capital China and 5Y Capital. An unnamed ‘renowned’ strategic investor joined SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 to co-lead the series C, which included Northern Light Venture Capital and Index Ventures.
Founded in 2018, Xmov is working on artificial intelligence-equipped computer vision and graphics products, such as simulated virtual content including 3D avatars and personas, in addition to livestreaming offerings and other metaverse infrastructure components. Tencent, Alibaba, Xiaomi and L’Oréal are among its customers.
The company had raised hundreds of millions of yuan (RMB100m = $935,000 in current rates) in a 2019 series A round led by an undisclosed investor and backed by investors including Sequoia China, 5Y Capital (then known as Morningside Venture Capital) and TouTou Shidao New Media Fund.
Dennis Chang, a China-based managing partner for SoftBank Vision Funds, said: “Compared with the traditional single-point software tools and human-intensive content production process, the end-to-end full-stack virtual content and the intelligent production process built by Xmov can greatly improve the quality of 3D virtual content creation.
“We believe Xmov’s full-stack intelligent technology can bring a new wave of technological changes to the traditional 3D content production industry, and we are also optimistic that Xmov will become the next-generation infrastructure for virtual content production in the metaverse era.” (Translated from Chinese by Global Corporate Venturing)
Image courtesy of Xmov (Shanghai) Information Technology Co Ltd.
