AmazeVR has closed a $15 million (€13m) round of funding to support its vision for VR concerts. Funding was provided by Partners Investment, Smilegate Investment, Quantum Ventures Korea, ABC Partners, Everrich Group, and GS Futures, the corporate venture capital arm of GS Group, one of the largest Korean conglomerates.
In addition to these investors, AmazeVR has been backed by several other major investors: Timewise Investment, venture capital arm of CJ Group; LG Technology Ventures; Mirae Asset Capital; Mirae Asset Venture Investment; Murex Partners; Dunamu Partners; Base Investment; and We Ventures. The bridge funding was oversubscribed within three weeks. It includes $9.5m in previous bridge financing and brings the Los Angeles-based company’s total raise to $30.8m.
“This funding allows us to keep hiring aggressively,” says AmazeVR co-CEO Ernest Lee. “In 2021, we tripled our team in Hollywood and Seoul. We’ve been able to attract top talent from the industries we touch,” including creatives who have worked with artists such as Kanye and Cardi B; a former marketing director at Live Nation; a film buyer for Regal/Cinemark; and an AI engineer from NVIDIA. “This puts us in an ideal position to take full advantage of VR and the metaverse’s growing popularity, as we deliver VR concerts from major artists, first to theatres, then to homes worldwide.”
Teaming up with Megan Thee Stallion, AmazeVR is rolling out its approach to VR concert experiences in select AMC Theatres in Spring 2022. This first-ever VR concert tour springs from years of R&D that resulted in proprietary 9K cameras and in software that can automate complex Unreal Engine-based visual effects and run more than 100 headsets at a time. Using this technology, the company plans to scale its content creation, releasing new VR concert experiences weekly by 2024 to both in-theater and at-home viewers.
To drive this rapid growth, AmazeVR will raise a Series B in early 2022, bringing its mobile theatre guised as an artist’s tour bus to potential investors in Silicon Valley and beyond.