Cary — Epic Games, which has raised billions of dollars and helped create virtual worlds with partners like LEGO, has also poured money into a London-based startup focused on infrastructure technology for creating virtual worlds.
Hadean on Friday announced funding from privately held Epic and other investors including Chinese tech giant Tencent. (Tencent is also a big investor in Epic.)
The support should come as no surprise, as Epic earlier picked Haden for one of its own “MegaGrants,” awarded to promising startups in the virtual world and video game markets.
Hadean also leverages Epic’s Unreal game engine technology.
LEGO teams up with Cary’s Epic Games to help build a kid-safe virtual world
In announcing the MegaGrant, Epic noted:
“Hadean and Unreal’s first key integration of 2019 caused a stir in the record-breaking EVE: Aether Wars, which included live demos from 3,750 players distributed globally. In addition to well-known projects with Minecraft, Microsoft and Xsolla, Hadean It has also begun to expand its commercial viability across industries. In 2020, the Francis Crick Institute launched a pioneering project to study in vitro and ex vivo modeling of coronaviruses, while in early 2021, the CAE launched an initial project to create a large-scale urban simulation of over 2 million entities.”
Molten Ventures led the new funding round. 2050 Capital, Alumni Ventures, Aster Capital, Entrepreneur First and InQTel also invested.
“Hadean’s computing power will provide the infrastructure we need in our efforts to create a scalable metaverse,” said Marc Petit, Epic’s VP of Unreal Engine Ecosystems. “The company’s technology works by supporting large numbers of concurrent users and providing creators and developers with the necessary infrastructure. The developer unlocks new tools to complement Epic’s Unreal Engine. We’re excited to contribute to Hadean’s development and look forward to continuing to work together to lay the foundations for the Metaverse.”
Famous epics:
“We’re excited to help Unreal Engine developers more easily access distributed computing capabilities to create photorealistic digital twins,
Kim Libreri, CTO of Epic Games said:
Hadean launched in 2015.
“Hadean’s mission is to connect the physical and virtual worlds – helping us make better decisions and ultimately improve our quality of life in the real world,” Hadean co-founder and CEO Craig Beddis said in a statement express.
“Today’s virtual world is a limited experience – small, isolated and insecure. So why, these are the technical challenges we are solving today. But we believe that the true success and mass adoption of the metaverse will depend on Can creators easily build their own experiences at scale, leveraging open and powerful metaverse-as-a-service technologies. We’re excited to partner with industry leaders like Epic Games who share our ethos and ambitions for this reality. “
About the company
“Hadean has developed significant metaverse components and has signed multi-year agreements with entertainment (Minecraft, Pixelynx, Sony and Gamescoin) as well as educational and enterprise digital twin providers. Hadean at Game Developers Conference 2019 with EVE Online maker CCP Games’ 14,000-player Unreal Engine demo is just one example of how the company’s infrastructure technology can support large numbers of concurrent participants in a virtual environment.”
Source: Hadian
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