High Fidelity, a US-based developer of deployable virtual worlds previously backed by internet company Google’s corporate venturing arm Google Ventures, secured $11m in series B funding on Thursday.
Investment firm Vulcan Capital led the round, with the other investors undisclosed, though High Fidelity did reveal that they include a mix of new and existing backers.
High Fidelity was founded in 2013 by Philip Rosedale, the inventor of virtual reality online community Second Life. Its open-source platform, which is still in development, enables the quick generation of a 3D virtual environment to interact with other users.
The startup secured $2.5m from venture capital firm True Ventures in March 2014, after it had raised $2.4m from True Ventures and Google Ventures in 2013.
High Fidelity will use the fresh funding to expand its engineering, design and content development teams, continue development and to release an early-stage version of the platform.
Rosedale said in a statement announcing the funding: “This is certainly great news for us, but also great news for the overall VR ecosystem as we continue to see more and more validation from the investing community that VR presents enormous opportunities.
“With this investment, we will be able to substantially grow our team as we continue to develop and release our open source shared virtual reality software.”