Softbank, a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company is reportedly the latest to join the Metaverse mania. The firm is reportedly in talks to invest $150 million in the South Korean Metaverse platform Zepeto, as per a report in WSJ.
Zepeto is considered one of the fastest-growing Metaverse platforms in South Asia boasting 2 million daily users. The platform allows users to build a digital avatar by simply scanning a photo and roaming in the metaverse while interacting with other users. 70% of the platform users are female between the age of 13-24 years, making it one of the rare platforms dominated by female users.
“We‘re probably the world’s largest virtual fashion marketplace,” said Rudy Lee, the chief strategy officer at Naver Z Corp., a subsidiary of the South Korean internet giant that operates Zepeto.
Zepeto reported 47 million users on its platform in their quarter making it one of the busiest metaverse platforms. Softbank‘s $150 million investment would give it a valuation of over $1 billion, making it one of the early metaverse unicorns. Apart from Softbank, the Series B funding round saw participation from South Korea’s HYBE Co. the firm that manages the popular K-pop group BTS is set to invest nearly $41 million into the metaverse platform.
Metaverse Projects on the Rise
Metaverse has become the latest breakout use case from the crypto universe and major mainstream financial firms are showing great interest in the ecosystem. Facebook, the social media giant, whose first crypto venture failed before starting has gone through a massive rebranding and will be known as Meta.
Metaverse tokens such as Sandbox (SAND) and Decentraland (MANA) were among the top gainers in November. SAND and MANA rose 10X and 7X respectively over the past 30-days, at a time when the majority of the crypto market was in red and lost nearly 20% of their valuation to bears.
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