LIV: Largest Metaverse streaming platform continues to grow
LIV is the largest livestreaming platform for VR and AR content. Fresh capital and new technologies should accelerate its growth.
Prague-based startup LIV was founded in 2016 and develops software that allows recording and streaming of mixed reality videos. In this role, Liv also contributed to the success of Beat Saber: a mixed reality video of Beat Saber went viral in 2018 and reached more than ten million views.
The platform has since been significantly improved and its functionality expanded. Users can record themselves as avatars, making a green screen and a physical camera superfluous. The corresponding phenomenon is called VTubing.
Later, support for Meta Quest recording via smartphone and PC followed. Liv supports streaming via YouTube, Twitch and Tiktok. Streamers see the live chat and notifications in virtual reality.
The start-up is expanding
Liv says it supports more than half of the 100 most popular VR games and has 13,000 creators who generate 30,000 hours of content every month. Since 2018, they have recorded 3.5 billion views.
Now the startup has secured $8.5 million in Series A funding. The lead investor is Bitkraft Ventures. Also involved are Sony Innovation Fund, Amazon Alexa Fund, Credo Ventures, Samsung Next and Olive Tree Capital.
The money will go toward funding creators and developers, and secondly, increasing the size of the team across all roles. Liv currently has 13 employees.
Liv plans a VR switch
The startup is currently preparing a new technology and platform to launch this year. "It enables the capturing of entire worlds and the people that inhabit it, for playback or live consumption by anyone, on any device, opening up an entirely new category of social experiences between fans, creators and gamers," the press release states.
That sounds like a platform that failed startup Vreal tackled a few years ago. The idea was that viewers could enter VR scenes with VR headsets and be in the same virtual space as the person streaming, a sort of VR Twitch.
Vreal ceased operations in 2019 due to low demand. With the increasing use of VR headsets and the Metaverse hype, it may be the right time to revisit the concept.
Read more about the Metaverse:
- Wendy's opens store in Metas Metaverse
- Despite stock market crash: Meta raises Metaverse bet
- Metaverse arms race: Alibaba joins Nreal
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