Hadean, the UK-based spatial computing startup that has begun building the infrastructure for its thriving metaverse, has closed a $30 million Series 1 funding round from a high-profile group of investors, including Epic Games and Tencent.
Founded in London in 2015, Hadean began with a broad mission to put „supercomputer levels of processing power at anyone’s disposal,“ TechCrunch wrote back in 2017 when the company was still in beta. In the intervening years, Hadean has iterated various use cases and emerged as a major player in the gaming arena in particular, having the power of hits like Minecraft.
At its core, Hadean is all about helping developers extend their code base to support programs that require significant computing power, something Minecraft is especially demanding when it involves online multiplayer engagement. Hadean’s spatial simulation library is integrated with all major game engines, and helps MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) and other online game developers avoid having to set limits for players, or use other forms of technical (but limited) tricks to circumvent On issues created by hundreds or more players involved at the same time. It’s all about keeping the dreaded „lag“ at bay, while maintaining the depth, complexity, and realism of an offline single-player console game.
This is accomplished through the magic of distributed computing, as Hadean’s platform gets rid of „excessive middleware, orchestration, and redundant engineering,“ as the company states, dynamically saving more or less resources as the game requires.
But the underlying technology can be used in almost any use case, from resource-intensive enterprise applications to web3, blockchain, and the metaverse. Back in July, Hadean was awarded a contract with the British Army to build a ground warfare simulation training environment.
A virtual world as evidenced by Hadean. Image credits: Hadian
Epic investment
Against this backdrop, Hadean has now secured a slew of illustrious supporters eager for early entry, while the metaverse is still in its nascent years.
As The Telegraph first reported last month [paywalled]Hadean initially secured about $18 million in funding from investors, including Chinese technology company Tencent and InQTel, a CIA-backed non-profit based in Virginia, US. It was still in the process of closing the funding round, which it is announcing today.
The full list of (known) major investor backers include Molten Ventures (formerly Draper Esprit), Tencent, 2050 Capital, Alumni Ventures, Aster Capital, Entrepreneur First, InQtel and the great Epic Games, which also happens to be To be a Hadean customer. In fact, Epic Games previously committed funding to Hadean in the form of MegaGrant, which are grants to support companies working on projects to help support its Unreal Engine.
In an email to TechCrunch, Hadean CEO Craig Beds said Epic Games was late to the first round, and so had to invest through convertible bonds, which basically means it’s short-term debt that will turn into equity. It’s also worth noting that Epic Games recently raised about $2 billion to build what it’s promoting as a kid-friendly metaverse, which gives another clue as to why the Fortnite creator is investing directly in Hadean.
“Hadean’s computing power will provide the infrastructure needed as we work to create a scalable metaverse,” Mark Petty, who is vice president of the Unreal Engine Ecosystem at Epic, said in a statement. „The company’s technology complements Epic’s Unreal Engine by enabling massive numbers of concurrent users and unlocking new tools for creators and developers.“
Tencent’s participation is also noteworthy, given the current geopolitical tensions between China and the United States, Bedes explained that Hadean ended up taking less money than was offered by Tencent in order to remain compliant with the CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States), and avoided a security review. nationalist.
With another $30 million in the bank, on top of its previously raised initial rounds of about $16.5 million, Hadean is well-funded to double its existing strength across the gaming, government, and corporate domains, powering all types of web 3 and metaverse applications.
“Hadean’s mission is to connect the physical and virtual worlds — to help us make better decisions and ultimately improve our quality of life in the physical world,” Bedes said. “Virtual worlds today are a limited experience – small in scale, isolated, and insecure. That is why these are the technical challenges we are addressing today. But we believe that the true success and mass adoption of metaverse will depend on the ease with which creators will be able to build their own experiences at scale. , taking advantage of open and robust metaverse-as-a-service technologies.“
