Nas and Lil Baby-backed metaverse firm Everyrealm closes $60m funding round led by Andreesen Horowitz – Music Business Worldwide

Virtual real estate is big business, and it’s getting more and more attention from the music industry.

In January, Warner Music struck a deal with The Sandbox to create the ‘first music-themed world’ within the gaming metaverse, and next month, music fans will be able to buy virtual ‘LANDS’ adjacent to the WMG property.

To give you an indication of how much virtual land can sell for in the metaverse, an individual bought a property next to Snoop Dogg’s virtual Sandbox estate for the equivalent of $450,000 last year.

Warner’s deal followed a $93 million funding round secured by The Sandbox in November. The Sandbox, meanwhile, is a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands, which Bloomberg reports is in talks to secure backing from investment giant KKR, which would take its latest funding round to $500 million.

Today (February 10), we learn of yet another metaverse firm closing a significant funding round, and it’s attracted investment from a few superstar artists, too.

That company is Everyrealm (rebranded from Republic Realm), which describes itself as “one of the most active investors in and developers of the metaverse ecosystem”.

Everyrealm has closed a $60 million Series A financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz, and some of the individual investors in the platform include music stars like Nas, Gunna, Baby Keem, Gene Simmons and Lil Baby.

The firm, led by CEO Janine Yorio was co-founded by TJ Kawamura, Julia Schwartz, Jesse Stein, and Kostas Ketikidis, and the company states that this investment marks one of the largest Series A rounds for a company led by a female CEO.

Founded in 2021, Everyrealm says that it has real estate holdings in 25 metaverse platforms, and that it has developed more than 100 metaverse real-estate projects.

It  also owns over 3,000 NFTs and manages an e-sports gaming guild.

Everyrealm’s metaverse real estate development projects include Fantasy Islands, an “ultra-luxury master planned community” withinin the Sandbox platform, which sold an associated NFT megayacht for 150 ETH (approximately $650,000).

The firm’s other projects include Metajuku, a shopping district in Decentraland; Realm Academy, an online educational campus in the metaverse, which is located in Somnium Space; and the GFT Shoppe, a multi-metaverse retail concept that sells NFTs “inspired by cult brands like Atari”.

Other investors in Everyrealm’s Series A financing round included Coinbase Ventures, NGC Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, Hashed, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Griffin Gaming Partners, Liberty City Ventures, Dapper Labs, Brevan Howard, Flamingo DAO, Wilshire Lane Capital, Pillar VC, Valor Equity Partners, Foresight Ventures, Animoca Brands, OneFootball, the Sandbox, Electric Feel Ventures, Goldentree and Everblue.

The list of individual investors also includes Jeffrey Katzenberg, Paris Hilton, Mario Götze, Randi Zuckerberg, Mark Pincus (of Zynga), Fara Leff, Ebonie Ward, Jeffrey Zirlin (of Axie Infinity), Sebastien Borget (of the Sandbox), Lucas Van Cranach (of OneFootball), Lauren Selig, Jonathan Cohen, Anthony Saleh and Andrew Farkas.

“We are building the gateway to the metaverse, to do for the metaverse what Coinbase did for crypto, what Netflix did for streaming entertainment, and what Google did for the internet.”

Janine Yorio, Everyrealm

Janine Yorio, CEO of Everyrealm said: “Metaverse real estate development is all about placemaking.

“Everyrealm creates innovative and addictive social spaces that are futuristic and interactive like video games but still familiar to a mainstream audience, by invoking real-world architecture, culture and events.

Added Yorio: “Everyrealm is developing this interactive content across many genres, including sports, education, fashion, gaming, art and social experiences–all designed to draw users to the metaverse.

“We are also creating the infrastructure required to distribute that interactive content to a global, mainstream audience.

“We are building the gateway to the metaverse, to do for the metaverse what Coinbase did for crypto, what Netflix did for streaming entertainment, and what Google did for the internet.”Music Business Worldwide