Ever since Facebook rebranded to Meta, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that his company will no longer be considered a social media company once it is a metaverse company, the trend towards the future shifted.
Developments of future-based technologies that involve Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) started seeing increased boost.
With the world started seeing the release of Meta's Horizon Worlds among others, an increasing number of people began to realize that the metaverse can indeed become a multi-billion dollar business, created by a collaborative efforts of many developers.
This time, Qualcomm that seeing the shift, is betting its chances.
The giant chipmaker has previously partnered with Microsoft to create custom chipsets for VR headsets.
This time, it is putting $100 million to the table.
Qualcomm has announced the launch of the 'Snapdragon Metaverse Fund.'
The fund the company is pouring in, is part of its investment to whoever wish to build things in the metaverse through AR and VR.
The Snapdragon Metaverse Fund, according to Qualcomm, was established to invest up to $100 million in "developers and companies building unique, immersive XR experiences, as well as associated core augmented reality and related artificial intelligence technologies."
The fund is meant to help provide developers the capital through a combination of venture investments, managed by the company's investment arm, Qualcomm Ventures. Areas that Qualcomm is after, also include extended reality (XR) experiences in gaming, health and wellness, media, entertainment, education and enterprise.
According to Hemanth Sampath, Senior Director of Engineering at Qualcomm, the metaverse "is this ever-present spatial internet that fuses the virtual and physical worlds where everyone and everything can virtually connect and interact with one another."
"We believe that the next version of computing will be spatial computing, which many people now are calling the metaverse," Qualcomm product VP Mike Roberts said during a press briefing.
“Whatever the metaverse ends up looking like, we are going to be powering it.”
Qualcomm that predicts more and more headsets and VR gears are going be sold, is certain that the company is going to play a huge role in the technology's growth.
"If you are going to spend time in the metaverse, Snapdragon is going to be your ticket," once said Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, back in 2021.
"We were investing in this technology when it wasn’t popular […] And we’re very, very happy with the opportunity in front of us, of connection of physical and digital spaces. This opportunity is real; it’s one of the largest expansions of addressable market that we’re going to see. We believe many other ecosystems are going to embrace these technologies and bring scale," he said.
And this time, through the Snapdragon Metaverse Fund, "we look forward to empowering developers and companies of all sizes as they push boundaries of what’s possible as we enter into this new generation of spatial computing," said Amon in a statement.
According to the CEO, the fund is meant to empower developers and companies of any size, "as they push boundaries of what’s possible as we enter into this new generation of spatial computing."
In another news, Qualcomm has also partnered with Square Enix to create immersive XR experiences for the latter’s network of studios and intellectual properties.
To do this, Square Enix’s team partners with Qualcomm to collaborate on the Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform, providing both companies with advanced gaming experiences.
Square Enix, a Tokyo, Japan-based entertainment company, has contributed to the historic success of games such as the Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider series, and more.
