BUD has received tens of millions of dollars in investment, and the fiery meta-universe social, entrepreneurial upstarts and Internet giants are all in the layout

Per reporter: Tang Ruyu Yao Yanan Per editor: Xiao Ruidong

Today, the global meta-universe social platform BUD Technologies, Inc ( hereinafter referred to as BUD ) announced the completion of a $15 million A+ round of financing, led by Qiming Venture Capital, and the old shareholders GV Jiyuan Capital, Yunjiu Capital and Source Code Capital over-invested.

Meta-universes have been a well-deserved outlet in the venture capital circle since last year, and social networking is one of the most attractive scenes. Compared with traditional social platforms, the meta-universe social platform has added a virtual image and online space, and users can create their own virtual 3D images for social interaction by pinching their faces and designing and wearing. In this segmentation track, a number of overseas startups have obtained a lot of financing, and domestic Internet manufacturers such as Baidu and ByteDance are also actively deploying.

Under the social outlet of the metaverse, the threshold for building a metaverse world is lowered

According to public information, BUD was founded in 2019 as a brand of Shenzhen Zero Point One Entertainment Technology Co., Ltd., which is a UGC (User Generated Content) social platform. Specifically, its platform allows users to create personalized 3D interactive content using simple code-free tools; the company hopes to appeal to Gen Z users around the world with a distinctive UGC, immersive metaverse experience, and 3D digital content that blends hot, fashion and other themes. Specifically, BUD is used to create its own metaverse map on its platform without complicated programming, through the mobile phone, and can use music tiles, text boxes, portals, spins and other props to enrich their creativity, through sharing and other modes to achieve personalized content interaction.

According to BUD, its products have greatly reduced the threshold of 3D creation, many creators of BUD can neither program nor model, BUD gives them this low threshold creation tool, and can also make content that is both interesting and has a high degree of freedom.

It is reported that bud team members come from Tencent, ByteDance, Alibaba, Facebook, Snapchat and other Internet companies. Qixinbao shows that BUD has won four rounds of financing since its inception, and in the future, BUD will set up a global center in Singapore, and there will be localized operation teams and development teams in the core areas of globalization.

Startups have received huge financing, and Internet giants have also laid out

As a well-deserved outlet in the venture capital circle since last year, meta-universe has attracted great attention from the investment circle. Dong Zhanbin, founding partner of Qingsong Fund, said in an interview that the meta-universe has opened a new skylight for the investment circle, which greatly caters to everyone's expectations for investment, which is relatively hazy but the imagination is very good, the capital market has always liked new concepts, coupled with fewer opportunities for consumer Internet, whether it is early funds or late funds, many are looking at this direction.

Specifically, social, games, VR/AR, virtual people and other four subdivisions of the most attention of investors, social is undoubtedly one of the most attractive scenes in the metaverse, the metaverse of the social platform new virtual image, online space, users can pinch their faces, design and wear for themselves to create a tide play virtual 3D image. Every reporter noticed that a number of startups have won a lot of financing on the track of meta-universe social networking.

In December 2021, Rec Room, a meta-universe social platform, announced the completion of a $145 million financing from Investor Management, Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, etc., with a valuation of $3.5 billion. In Rec Room, players can achieve social behaviors that are close to the real world, such as real-time voice, high-fives, handshakes, etc. At present, the Rec Room application has covered mobile devices, game consoles, PCs, VR headsets, etc.

Zepeto, a meta-universe virtual social platform owned by South Korea's Naver Z, also announced in December last year that it had received about $189 million in Series B financing from Japan's SoftBank Group's Vision Fund 2 and HYBE, a BTS brokerage company. It is understood that Zepet is a virtual fashion social platform to create a personal digital image, users need to "pinch their faces" on the platform first, and they can also use virtual currency on the platform to buy fashion clothing and jewelry to dress up their own avatars, reports from foreign media show that Gucci, Dior and other brands have launched virtual clothing series on Zepeto. In addition to virtual characters, Zepeto has created a virtual game world in which users can manipulate their own virtual characters to act in the world.

In addition to entrepreneurial upstarts, domestic Internet manufacturers in the meta-universe social field has also begun to have a layout, Baidu in 2021 launched a social APP called "Xi'an", hoping to create an identity, across the virtual and display, permanent survival of the multi-person interactive virtual world, Baidu Create2021 (Baidu AI Developer Conference) is held in "Xi'an", which is the first domestic conference held in the meta-universe, can accommodate 100,000 people to interact with the same screen at the same time. Ma Jie, vice president of Baidu and head of Greece, said that the meta-universe is still in a very early stage of industrial exploration, and its development is gradual, which will be jointly built and matured by the entire community for a long time. "Party Island" is a metaversic social platform that ByteDance is testing, where users can hang out with friends in their avatar avatars at any time, and can also chat and interact together in real time and participate in online activities together.