The Multiverse Network, the company building the world's leading network of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and 3D virtual worlds, today announced that it raised $4.175 million in Series A funding. The funding was led by Sterling Stamos Capital Management -- a private investment firm with over $4 billion in assets under management -- and included several prominent angel investors.
Multiverse CEO and Co-Founder, Bill Turpin, and the other Multiverse co- founders who are veterans from Netscape's early days, helped create much of the core technology that fueled the growth of the World Wide Web.
"Similar to what we experienced with the Internet in 1995, our vision today is to spark explosive growth of 3D virtual worlds," Turpin said. "As an industry, we're just now beginning to understand this new medium's enormous potential. Empowered by our technology, the next wave of online pioneers will create a wide variety of virtual worlds faster and for less money than ever before."
Multiverse also announced today that Joanna Strober will join the Multiverse Board of Directors immediately. Strober is director of Private Equity at Sterling Stamos. She has prior experience investing in early-stage consumer companies, such as BlueNile.
"We believe that Multiverse will play a fundamental role in the growth of virtual worlds and multiplayer games," Strober said. "Based on the Multiverse team's experience and creative vision, we believe they could become a $1 billion leader creating breakthrough applications for business, education, government and entertainment."
Presently, over 10,000 development teams from around the world have signed-up to use the Multiverse Platform, and over 150 teams have begun building projects ranging from fantasy and science fiction MMOGs to educational worlds designed to teach users everything from math and science to the works of William Shakespeare.
Multiverse plans to use the funding to hire additional staff, complete version 1.0 of its platform, and launch its consumer network of games and virtual worlds later this year or early 2008.
