UPDATED 13:00 EDT / MAY 23 2022

BLOCKCHAIN

Mobile metaverse platform BUD raises $37M to incorporate NFTs

BUD Technologies Inc., the developer of a virtual platform for users to create interactive shared 3D content, today announced that it has raised $36.8 million in new funding led by Sequoia Capital India.

The Series B funding round is the second in the past three months, bringing its total funding to more than $60 million. New investors joining the round included ClearVue Partners, NetEase and Northern Light Venture Capital with existing investors GGV Capital, Qiming Venture Partners and Source Code Capital also participating in the round.

BUD is a mobile application that runs on Android and iOS devices to provide access to a metaverse platform, a virtual reality space where users can enter with avatars and socialize. There they can hang out, explore and build interactive content to express themselves.

The company also announced that it will use the new funding to add nonfungible tokens, NFTs, to its platform as part of a push into Web3, otherwise known as the decentralized web. NFTs allow users to create and verify the ownership of virtual items by recording their sales and trades on blockchains.

That will make it possible for the users of BUD to make money off their creations in BUD and is the foundation of many Web3 metaverse apps. For example, The Sandbox and Decentraland operate by allowing users to create virtual items, which are NFTs, and sell them to other users for cryptocurrency tokens, which can then be exchanged for money.

“While BUD makes 3D content creation possible for mainstream Gen Z consumers, we will continue to bring blockchain to mainstream consumers and allow our creators to truly own and monetize their creations,” Shawn Linin, co-founder of BUD, told Techcrunch in a statement.

The company did not give any details as to which blockchain it intends to use for the upcoming NFTs or what crypto tokens will be implemented. However, the marketplace for the items is expected to launch soon.

The NFT market saw staggering volume in 2021, according to a report from Chainalysis, reaching more than $40 billion, but sales during 2021 are beginning to level off. Even with that, the same report suggests that sales volumes for 2022 will more than double from last year to an estimated $90 billion, even with dropping monthly sales in the first half of 2021.

According to BUD, users have created more than 15 million virtual spaces in the game that players can join and play together. And, virtual items, including costumes and accessories have changed hands more than 150 million times.

Image: BUD Technologies

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