A $10 Million Raise for AI “Native Inhabitants” of the Metaverse

Regardless of who you talk to or the degree of company spin you’re dealing with, most discussions and pitches involving the metaverse will touch upon the idea of feeling present with your fellow users, i.e. with other real people on the platform. But there’s also a strong push—backed by proven talent and reputable investment—to populate virtual worlds with purely AI-powered characters. How these characters will work in practice and what it will feel like to interact with them are as big as any other questions for the nascent metaverse.

Today, one of the main competitors in the simulated beings space, Inworld AI, secured $10 million in funding to keep figuring that out. The company started up last year with talent from Google and DeepMind and initially raised $7 million in seed funding from Kleiner Perkins, CRV and Meta Platforms. The new money is an extension of that initial seed round and is led by BITKRAFT, with the Venture Reality Fund also participating. Its list of angel investors also includes co-founders from Twitch and Oculus, Inworld announced.