NFTs for 5G? Qualcomm launches $100M Snapdragon Metaverse Fund
Wireless technology provider Qualcomm announced the launch of an initiative to help bankroll developers and companies that are building extended reality (XR) experiences. The Snapdragon Metaverse Fund with start with an initial investment of up to $100 million
Qualcomm has already been developing new technologies to enable the metaverse including the Snapdragon XR Platform, Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform, as well as programs to support development such as XR Labs Europe. The company said these building blocks have strengthened its position in the XR ecosystem and helped it better understand the opportunities within the metaverse.
“We deliver the groundbreaking platform technology and experiences that will enable both the consumer and the enterprise to build and engage in the metaverse and allow the physical and digital worlds to be connected. Qualcomm is the ticket to the metaverse,” said Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated. “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.”
The Qualcomm Metaverse Fund plans to deploy the capital through a combination of venture investments in XR companies and a grant program for the developer ecosystem with all of it channeling into gaming, health and wellness, media, entertainment, education, and enterprise industry.
Qualcomm expects to fund developers using a “combination of associated augmented reality (AR) and related artificial intelligence technologies.” While the XR terminology usually refers also to virtual reality technologies, Qualcomm’s initial focus seems to be less on creating brand new virtual worlds, as Meta (Facebook) is doing, and more on AR’s additive presentation of data and graphic visualization to physical environments, as evidenced by how its development platform is being presented.
Will Qualcomm’s Metaverse Fund help edge computing?
Companies are trying to create virtual spaces where people can communicate, play games with thousands of players and engage in immersive learning experiences by a variety of means, from funding (potentially loss-making) metaverse businesses to launching developer programs for the XR ecosystem. For over two decades, edge computing in one form or another has been offered as a way to lower service latency, improve the user experience and enhance the quality of services. In essence, edge computing will support all the core technologies and applications that are part of the metaverse. Qualcomm’s $100M bet on XR technologies is a reasonable bet on the growth of the larger metaverse economy but does pale in comparison to Meta’s investment (or setting fire to cash, depending on how you look at it) of $10B on its AR/VR business.
Jim Davis contributed to this report.
Article Topics
5G | AR/VR | augmented reality | Facebook | Meta | metaverse | NFT | Qualcomm
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