Hologram raises $ 6.5 million for blockchain-based avatars that you can use in video calls

Hologram, an all-in-one platform for virtual beings, announced today that it has raised $ 6.5 million in start-up funding for avatars that you can use in video calling.

The whole goal is to enable avatars to move across applications, much as you would expect them to do in the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, as in novels such as Snow crash and Ready Player One.

The San Francisco company allows you to use non-fungible token (NFT) images or characters as avatars, and you can use these avatars to represent yourself as a lip-synced character in a Zoom or Google Meet conversation. I did an interview with CEO Tong Pow, and he used his avatar all the time. So I do not know if it really was him or not. Pow calls this “the pseudonymous economy.” This gives some benefit to the bored monkeys and other NFT images that many people now criticize for being a bunch of hype.

Polychain Capital led the round, with the participation of Nascent, Inflection, The Operating Group, Quantstamp, Neon DAO, Foothill Ventures and South Park Commons.

Other angel investors include Mike Shinoda (co-founder of Linkin Park and advisor to Warner Records), Kalos (founder of Parallel NFT), Richard Ma (founder of Quantstamp) and Naveen Jain (founder of Yat Labs).

The company (dba Hologram Labs) will use the money to expand the team with more key hires and increase capacity to support the rapidly growing influx of partnership requests.

Hologram builds technology to give people more ways to express themselves and socialize in the pseudonymous economy, Pow said.

Utilizing the latest developments in machine learning, 3D and web3, Hologram enables any online community to create, own and engage with immersive virtual characters, goods and experiences on a large scale. Users can connect with others, create content and build their brands on any video or gaming platform, such as Zoom, Twitch, VR chat and hundreds of others as their digital characters with one click.

Following a successful launch with the Anata NFT community in April, Hologram is already integrating its technology with more than 10 NFT communities, including popular projects such as Cool Cats, Deadfellaz and Crypto Covens. This strategic round will enable Hologram to expand its offering to many more network creators and communities over the coming months.

“Hologram brings exactly what we promised to our society – magic,” the Crypto Covens team said in a statement. “Part of the appeal of NFTs with profile pictures is to assume an identity you find beautiful, remarkable, powerful, and WITCH holograms take it longer than we could have imagined. They are the perfect channel for building community, role-playing and immersive magic. »

“So much of the magic of web3 comes from using the practice of experimenting with identity that is so common in the early internet and merging it with the technologies we’ve developed in recent years!” said Xuannu, the founder of Crypto Covens, in a statement. “Holograms have meant we have pseudonymous identities with a wealth of expressions I honestly never expected to have.”

Pow and Hongzi Mao, co-founders of Hologram, began working on the project in December 2021. Prior to Hologram, Pow built consumer-facing cryptocurrencies at 0x Labs and 3D digital twin applications at the start of ML robotics, while Mao researched machine learning and video processing at sites like DeepMind and MIT, with thousands of citations under his belt.

After meeting in the South Park Commons, they started Hologram and made rapid progress on both the product development and partnership front towards becoming the best solution for bringing online communities and brands to life.

Hologram said it is building an all-in-one platform for virtual beings. Utilizing the latest developments in 3D, machine learning and web3, Hologram enables any online community to create and engage with highly immersive digital characters, goods and experiences on a large scale. Users can connect with others, create content and build their brand on any video or gaming platform, such as Zoom, Twitch, VR chat and hundreds of others as their digital characters with one click.

“That means we build the framework to enable any online community to create digital characters, wearables and just digital assets on a large scale,” Pow said. “And also build the tool to enable any user to get their virtual characters and visual identities on with one click on any video platform.”

Pow notes that the promise of the metaverse is to create worlds where you can be who you want to be.

“And then the idea of ​​pseudonymity. And we really take that angle,” Pow said. to become their digital identities. “

Right now, the company supports both 2D and 3D avatars. Pow believes that avatars help to create a sense of presence, that you have been transported to another place in the metaverse. And it makes sense to use NFT art and other images that people think of that represent their personalities. But with video calls, people are forced to show themselves on camera, and that makes some uncomfortable.

For Google Meet conversations, Hologram has created a Chrome extension that allows the app to see the avatars owned in a crypto wallet. So it can see which NFTs you own, and then it can take one of these avatars and turn them into what the company calls “holograms.” Then Hologram brings that image to life as an animated avatar, and it can move the character’s mouth in lip-syncing as you speak.

Thanks to the partnerships, users now have access to tens of thousands of avatars they have created on various platforms.

“What we sell directly benefits your NFTs,” Pow said.

The company generates revenue through its partnerships with various NFT and avatar producers. In the long run, it hopes to make money on consumers directly around their adaptations. Over time, the company hopes to make collections of avatars available for others to use, with permission.

When it comes to competition like Ready Player Me or Genies, Pow is excited.

“I am very excited about the fact that there are several companies that create avatars that create their own IP, their own brands,” he said. “With Hologram, we’re really about supporting yourself and self-expression, and enabling it in immersive experiences.”

Holograms also hope to gain points among influencers and Vtubers, or the virtual characters that people use to express their personalities on livestreams and recorded videos. Vtubers has picked up speed dramatically in Asia.

The company has a team of six people now and employs.

The company has contracts that require users to respect intellectual property, so it is not OK to use avatars that infringe on the copyrights of others without permission. Hologram must enforce it.

Pow grew up in Shenzhen, China, and he loved playing Chinese massively multiplayer online role-playing games, and he thought of these as meta-verses when he was young. The main fantasy was to become another in a virtual world. By extending it to the current idea of ​​the meta-verse, whether it is on 2D screens or in virtual reality or augmented reality, Pow believes that the self-expression part is even more important.

“I think these identities really matter,” Pow said.

Pow admits that he is very much built into sci-fi and cryptocurrency, and therefore it is perfectly normal for him and his friends to wear an avatar. He can feel confident if he shows his real face in business conversations, and he thinks many people can feel that way. On the other hand, business meetings often require trust, and therefore business people may want to show their real faces. Pow points out that many people are recognizable for the work they have done and their reputation, and that they may not need to show their faces in conversations.