36Kr learned that Vland Cloud has completed tens of millions of yuan of angel round and Pre-A round of financing in half a year, the angel round is led by Shunwei Capital, and the Pre-A round is led by Sequoia China.
Vland Cloud Live is a virtual space as a service (VSaaS) social interactive cloud platform that integrates real-time audio and video technology and gamified scene generation technology. This round of funding will be used for further iterative updates of the product and team upgrades and expansions.
2021 has come to an end, and the threat of COVID-19 to humanity remains. In contrast, since the beginning of the epidemic, the way we gather offline has undergone tremendous changes, but the way we talk online has not ushered in much of an upgrade. A camera, a pair of headphones, facing a small grid framed with several portraits – if we really want to live with the virus continuously, are we willing to admit that this is the ultimate form of online social networking?
Jin Qiuyuan felt that it was not okay. A graduate of Yale University, he and two other friends who graduated from prestigious universities founded Vland Cloud Site, which he hopes will become "a virtual live interactive cloud platform that everyone can design and create."
However, unlike the C-side social products in the current domestic market, Vland Cloud Field hopes to provide VSaaS services with the ability to build virtual spaces for all walks of life. Specifically, through Vland Cloud's self-developed creation engine, everyone can build personalized virtual scenes (such as community activities, business social networking, industry summits, offices, etc.) online, and invite others to enter the scene to participate in social activities.
Vland is divided into user side and creator side. On the user side, users can access online meetings through links, create their own avatars or use AI facemojis, and walk around and interact with other users in the virtual living room like games to complete real-time communication in online scenes.
Interactive live interaction
The meeting organizer can complete the creation and management of the venue on the creator side. Vland's Studio Map Editor provides templates and materials, users can move the "virtual furniture" through drag and drop, zero code to build virtual spaces for different scenes, such as building an office into a castle, developing a conference in the space capsule, etc., in a "gamified" way to reduce the threshold of participation and construction of the virtual world.
editor
The background management system of the cloud site also includes subdivision functions such as permission management system, material management system, ticket registration system, and on-site data kanban board. Basically, it can meet the common needs of meeting organizers.
"The original intention of our entrepreneurship is to connect people to create an inclusive virtual space technology platform, so that the threshold for participation and construction of the virtual world is greatly reduced, so that the general public and all walks of life can get more sense of participation and experience in the new generation of digital world, and the connection and interaction of each individual, company and organization can also create more value." Jin Qiuyuan said.
Vland is still in internal testing, and Vland will continue to optimize the experience of PC and mobile applications, and plans to launch a version adapted to XR when XR technology matures.
Jin Qiuyuan said that Vland's vision is to become the "Lego" of virtual space, providing infrastructure for the virtual world. "People can do 'brain-hole socialization' in virtual spaces. With Vland, as long as you have a brain hole, you can create a virtual scene in 5 minutes and invite friends to access it for 1 second. Future technologies will also lead to transformative innovations, such as the automatic generation of visual content with the help of AIGC technology. The barrier to entry for building a virtual space will be lower. Vland CTO Xu Jianglu said.
Vland's founding team members are all graduates of prestigious universities. CEO Jin Qiuyuan graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree, is a former exploration product manager, and has served as a strategic consultant for Bain & Company for Fortune 500 companies. CTO Xu Jianglu holds a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University, and COO Yu Cen Ning graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor's degree and a master's degree, and was the head of byteDance's feishu multidimensional form.