a16z Leads Ready Player Me's $56 Million Series B Investment Round

Andreessen Horowitz's a16z private venture capital firm led Ready Player Me's latest $56 million Series B investment round. Roblox co-founder David Baszucki, Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, Kevin Hart's venture fund, HartBeat, and more join a16z in the round, according to TechCrunch. 

In January 2022, Ready Player Me, a cross-game avatar platform built for the metaverse, raised $13 million during its Series A investment round. Both investments were at an undisclosed evaluation.

“Our bigger vision is to connect the metaverse through avatars,” Ready Player Me CEO and co-founder Timmu Toke said in an interview. “There may be metaverse [experiences] owned by big companies, who will make all the rules, but there is a vision of an open one where people can travel, built by millions of developers, where no one controls the whole thing. Like the internet. We’re trying to push the world towards that metaverse.”

Horowitz and a16z share that vision.

"We believe the next generation of games and virtual worlds will be built with interoperability as a core tenet," the VC firm said in a statement. "Rather than hold players inside walled gardens, the virtual worlds that comprise the open Metaverse will empower players to own their identity and take their digital assets wherever they go. These open economies will be larger and more durable than any closed economy game that we’ve seen yet, with players deeply invested in their assets and driving innovation as co-creators / co-owners of the world around them."

Ready Player Me currently hosts more than 3,000 web2 and web3 apps, including Somnium Space, Nike's RTFKT, and others.