Jadu, an augmented reality startup based in Los Angeles, has raised $7 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its world-scale AR metaverse: The Mirrorverse.
The seed funding round was led by General Catalyst with participation from Metapurse, LionTree, Coinbase Ventures, The VR Fund, PKO Investments, and Progression Fund. Angel investors like Guy Oseary, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, TIME President Keith Grossman, and Snoop Dogg’s manager Nick Adler also participated. Niko Bonatsos, Managing Director at General Catalyst, referred to the round by stating:
“We were quite impressed by Asad’s vision to design and build the Mirrorverse. Asad and his team at Jadu are true AR pioneers who have successfully managed to build a vibrant and rapidly growing Web3 community for their product. This community will serve as the foundation for the exciting upcoming launch of the AR game that will be launching in 2022. It’s rare to come across founding teams that consist of artists, AR pioneers, gaming experts and native crypto folks like Jadu’s team does. We are thrilled to be leading their seed round to help them make Asad’s vision a reality!”
Earlier this month, Jadu launched its NFT Hoverboards collection, making more than $4.4 in primary sales. The collection features NFTs designed in collaboration with personalities like Formula One world champion, Lewis Hamilton; Canadian musician and internet sensation, GRIMES; legendary American rapper, Snoop Dogg; visual artist, Mimi Onuoha and NFT curator, Trippy. The startup is now focusing on the development of its Mirrorverse game world, in which NFT holders will be able to use their tokens to interact with the Mirrorverse. Asad J. Malik, Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Jadu, said in this regard:
“Our team has been independently & diligently releasing boundary pushing AR for 6 years now. We’ve known we can create incredible AR experiences but it’s only now with Web3 incentive systems that the missing piece is finally obvious. The community that we formed around Jetpacks, which we have now expanded with Hoverboards, is an incredible way to develop AR as a true creative medium beyond social media filters and enterprise use cases.”
As the Metaverse and NFTs continue to capture the minds of millions of people around the world, startups like Jadu have strived to develop new use cases for the technology to allow for more complex ecosystems. For this reason, the NFT’s developed by the startup will be collaborating with The Sandbox later this year with the aim to show the high degree of interoperability its NFTs poses.
