01 Building the metaverse

Building the metaverse

The race is on as brands rush to stake their claim on the metaverse.

The metaverse dominated headlines, screens and boardrooms in the second half of 2021. Now brands and companies are rushing to prepare for this next iteration of digital engagement.

Big Tech brands are setting their sights on the metaverse. Facebook unveiled a massive brand pivot when it changed its company name to Meta in October 2021, after Mark Zuckerberg announced that the Meta’s future lies in becoming a metaverse company. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in August that year that Microsoft is working on building the “enterprise metaverse.”

Gaming companies began seriously carving out space for the metaverse on their platforms in 2021. In April, Epic Games closed a $1 billion round of funding to support its “long-term vision for the metaverse.” Niantic, the game developer behind Pokémon Go, raised $300 million in November to build what it describes as the “real-world metaverse.” Nvidia jumpstarted its “metaverse for engineers” with the opening of Omniverse in August. Now, other companies are shelling out to buy up game developers. Most recently, FarmVille creator Zynga was purchased for $12.7 billion in January 2022, and Tencent purchased UK game developer Sumo Group for $1.7 billion in July 2021.

Even brands in industries that are not directly related to the creation of the metaverse, such as law and wealth management, started anticipating its growing value in 2021. In March, the Metaverse Group announced plans to

launch Metaverse REIT, a first-of-its-kind real estate investment trust for virtual assets. Law firm Reed Smith released a legal guide to the metaverse in May, covering legal issues ranging from intellectual property to privacy to competition in what the firm calls “the biggest-ever industrial revolution the world has ever seen.” And in June, Roundhill Investments and Matthew Ball launched the Roundhill Ball Metaverse investment fund, which has holdings in companies including Nvidia, Tencent and Roblox.

Why it’s interesting Competition to create, define and own the metaverse has taken off. “There was a space race in the 1960s, and now there’s a metaverse race in 2021,” Krista Kim, digital artist and creator of the first NFT digital home, Mars House, tells Wunderman Thompson Intelligence. “People are really scurrying to build the new metaverse.”