10 companies from the metaverse sector that are worth your attention

Introduction

The topic of the metaverse has been gaining momentum in recent years. It is worth remembering that the word “metaverse” held the 2nd place among the most popular new words of the year in 2022, according to Oxford University. Despite many users having a general understanding of what the metaverse is, this term is still hardly understood.

Although people have not come to a single determination, many describe it as a virtual space, in which people can engage with each other, or a virtual space, which will replace the engagement between people in the future.

The technologies that allow users to dive into virtual worlds completely and interact with each other play a vital role in the metaverse. It is way better not just to stay in some environment but to experience unusual feelings with the help of VR headsets and various trackers that track your hand, leg, head movements, and your body in general. But technologies have not stopped.

For example, Meta has founded its VR device called Meta Quest 2, which fixates your eye position and provides data in virtual worlds where users can even see when someone is blinking. Despite journalists having not the most pleasant opinion about this function, it is just the beginning, and being in the metaverse can dramatically improve and change our understanding of communication over time.

The last two years were pretty interesting for metaverses and some sort of rich. This branch has received a lot of followers in the world of cryptography and some of them are fanatical about the topic of virtual realities. However, 2023 can become even more interesting and bright for the sector of the metaverse.

We will tell you about a few companies that are related to the world of the metaverse and can influence the future development of technologies, which can help users to transfer communication from real life to online or give an opportunity to asocial people to find friends from all over the world. It is important to note that the list will include not just the companies, which use all their forces to improve the sector of virtual worlds, but those that simply take steps toward it or are indirectly related to the topic with the metaverses.

In today’s material, we will talk about such companies as Yuga Labs, Epic Games, Roblox, Apple, Magic Leap, Nike, Unity, Nvidia, Animoca Brands, and, of course, Meta.

Yuga Labs

The creator of the NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club and the Otherside metaverse

First of all, Yuga Labs is famous for its NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club, which brought it a lot of fame and money. Despite the company being stuck in litigation related to copyright infringement and the question of the existence of these rights, in general, Yuga Labs is an important company in the cryptography industry.

The company has not just perpetuated its name in the history of the NFT sector thanks to such collections as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Crypto Punks, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and others but founded its metaverse called Otherside. In this virtual world by Yuga Labs, users can use their NFT tokens as avatars and interact with each other. Such avatars will cost a lot for players because the cheapest NFT tokens can be found at the second-hand market only at a six-figure dollar value. Considering that tokens are sold for Ethereum, which will be becoming more expensive in 2023, the price of items will become much higher.

In the Otherside metaverse, Yuga Labs have raised about $317,000,000, having sold virtual lands called Otherdeeds. Otherside has already attracted a lot of attention from crypto investors because Yuga Labs knows how to create hype around their projects. By the way, they were involved in a scandal related to their skills. According to the information received by cryptocurrency experts, the creators of the famous NFT collections worked with Guy Oseary, a talent manager. According to the current data, Oseary used his network of friends to spread the tokens among celebrities and attract a lot of attention and the celebrities using the NFT items from the collection BAYC included Justin Bieber, Madonna, Paris Hilton, Steph Curry, Eminem, and others.

Yuga Labs deny this information and say that they have not done any similar actions, however, the question of trusting the words of people who have not even copyrighted their collection is the business of each investor

Nevertheless, it will be interesting to follow the actions and development of Yuga Labs in 2023. The company has launched a new collection in the Bored Ape series called Sewer Pass. It will be used in the upcoming mobile application Dookey Dash. At the moment, the company Yuga Labs was estimated at $4,000,000,000. They succeeded in attracting big investments for the last time in March, last year. Back then, investors invested more than $450,000,000 in Yuga Labs and their art.

Epic Games

The video game developers, the founders of the popular game engine, and the owners of the Epic Games Store

Gamers and esports fans know about the name of the company Epic Games more than cryptography fans. Epic Games became recognized in the video game world after developing its game engine called Unreal Engine. It is used by the majority of video game projects. Epic Games became even more popular in 2017 when they made one of the best decisions in the history of the organization — to release a free Battle Royale version of the game Fortnite, which did not have the deserved attention when it was a single-player project.

Regarding today's topic, we would like to pay special attention to the technical solutions and the project Unreal Engine. The game engine has managed to achieve great heights and become popular among developers as a tool for the realization of the bravest ideas and the creation of visual effects for virtual worlds. All these technologies can be used in the metaverse sector and make users' stay in virtual worlds unforgettable.

The past year made the company Epic Games and the metaverse world even closer when Tim Sweeney’s company announced the internal investment in Hadean, the organization that specializes in working with virtual worlds. Epic Games also revealed their partnership with LEGO Group, which will bear fruit in the form of a metaverse platform oriented on the children’s audience.

Tim Sweeney, the CEO at Epic Games, has said many times how much the company wants to dive into the metaverse world and will help in its development. At the same time, he warned users that big monopolists like Apple will not leave virtual worlds without an opportunity to monetize it hard. Sweeny, in turn, sticks to the idea that metaverses should be based on open standards and companies should not compete with each other but work together to bring the immersion technologies to a brand new level.

Experts say that Epic Games reached the mark of $32,000,000,000 in terms of its market price last year. April 2022 gave an opportunity for video game developers to attract massive investments of $2,000,000,000. At the end of 2021, Epic Games released Matrix Awakens, which demonstrated all the advantages of Unreal Engine 5.

No. This is not a scene from a movie. It is a screenshot from a video game.

The demo project received enthusiastic reviews, having got 95% of positive opinions. The media and players called the project the thing that can “blur the line between the games and movies, or even reality”. If Epic Games continues developing in this direction, we will be able to have metaverses that will be extremely close to what we see in real life in terms of visuals.

Roblox

The social gaming platform. The project that can be called a Web2 metaverse

Although Roblox Incorporated has not revealed its intentions to conquer metaverses, however, they managed to create a gaming project that follows the principles of this term. Roblox is a complete social platform with many various virtual worlds, which are created by users and for users.

The ability to create gaming content has become the main killer feature of Roblox that attracted gamers’ attention from all over the world. The main target audience of the project is youth between the ages of 13-17. This gives space for discussion that if teenagers grow up with thoughts about the development of metaverses, this sphere will get a significant boost in development in a few years. It will be realized not just with the help of the owners of large corporations, which have colossal finances of dozens of billions of dollars but the grown-up young people who will be able to change this world for the better with their enthusiasm.

Roblox users can create various game projects. Gamers of all genres can find their place in this metaverse. Do you like role-played games? There are servers for such fans of role-playing. Are you fond of simulators? Here are your simulators. Do you want to dive into action and shoot your enemies? Shooter universes are for your service. Or maybe are you just bored and would like to meet someone and chat instead of simply gaming? In this case, you can also find an appropriate server.

At this moment, Roblox blurs the line between regular entertainment for players and the metaverse in its common meaning. Thanks to a giant user base, which consists of more than 50,000,000 players from all over the world, gamers can use Roblox as a virtual world to communicate, meet, and host events, concerts, thematic meetings, and many others.

Roblox turns 9 this year but the project has faced popularity not immediately. The second half of the 2010s helped to attract a lot of attention from the target audience. A big number of Roblox users makes this project one of the main virtual worlds. Unlike classical metaverses, the title works on Web2 technologies and does not target to conquer the crypto industry, however, everything might change in the future. Nevertheless, Roblox is an illustrative academic example of how the metaverses should be made, which will fit users who want to spend time in virtual worlds.

Regarding the market price of the company, Roblox Incorporated is now estimated at $21,400,000,000. The sums are colossal, of course, but it is far from what the company had in the past year before the shares of the company lost 43% of their price.

Apple

The biggest monopolist in the world

Apple is famous for having the biggest capitalization in the world and being one of the leading software and hardware developers. This company has become the first in the history of humanity that managed to surpass the mark of $1,000,000,000,000. At the moment, the overall capitalization of Apple is more than $2,310,000,000,000 and is still bigger than its competitors.

The company has achieved this result thanks to its hard approach to monetizing everything that can be monetized. The creators of the most popular smartphone in the world, the iPhone, were criticized many times for the decision to refuse to provide a battery charger for a phone in the starter kit. The commission for the AppStore developers is also extremely high and equals 30%. Such greedy decisions were criticized by people but helped the team to place first in terms of capitalization.

Now, Apple makes its attempts in conquering metaverses. The company announced the start of the development of mixed-reality headsets. According to some assumptions, the first prototypes will be revealed to the public in the spring of this year. According to Apple’s statements, the new device will be, at least, very competitive and have all high-technological developments, combining the abilities of both virtual and augmented realities. It means that if Apple succeeds in this business, users will be able not just to enter virtual worlds with the help of one device but use the functions of augmented reality, while these abilities are usually provided on different devices.

Despite Apple making good attempts to conquer the metaverse, Tim Cook treats this term highly negatively. He thinks that humanity might choose another term to express what they want to call metaverses, and Apple is trying to help. However, Cook expresses his deep respect for the technology that stands behind what we are used to calling the metaverse and wants Apple to support the development of virtual worlds.

Magic Leap

The augmented reality specialist

Unlike Apple, which makes their attempts in virtual and augmented realities simultaneously, the company Magic Leap has decided to focus on augmented reality technologies. They have created a device that helps to place virtual 3D objects in the real world. The latest device called Magic Leap 2 was released in September 2022.

The organization has decided to change its focus from private clients to corporate ones recently. This is reflected in the price and now, the price of their devices starts from $3,300.

Today, the overall market value of the company amounts to $2,000,000,000. Before 2021, this sum had been even more impressive, reaching almost $6,700,000,000. Magic Leap is an illustrative example of how technologies related to metaverses and augmented realities may not find such a quick response from investors as the company would like.

Nike

The manufacturer of sports clothes that makes steps toward the world of digital technologies

Nike is a very famous company that manufactures sports shoes, clothes, and accessories. According to some estimates, the influence of Nike was so widespread that 95% of basketball players from all over the world played in matches in the shoes of this company. At the moment, the market capitalization of the shoes and clothes manufacturer surpasses the mark of $197,500,000,000.

Despite the corporation not being related to the world of the metaverse directly, however, every cryptocurrency fan has heard at least once that the company makes its attempts to dive into the world of cryptography and metaverses, in particular. Nike has released its NFT collections many times, which can not just be listed in the investors’ portfolios but used as an attribute in virtual worlds. In such a way, crypto fans who have bought Nike clothes or shoes can wear elements of clothes on their 3D avatar and demonstrate their dedication to this manufacturer in metaverses.

2 years ago, Nike decided to purchase the studio NFT RTFKT, which is famous for creating fancy digital products and other items. It has not just allowed Nike to enter the world of virtual universes but dive into the augmented reality sector. Do you remember the Roblox metaverse, about which we told you earlier? In this metaverse, Nike created their virtual world called Nikeland, which is a store where users can buy elements of clothes, which can be worn by their 3D avatars.

It was not Nike’s last attempt to join the world of cryptography. In 2022, the company announced its NFT marketplace called.SWOOSH, and it started realizing the ideas and launched its shop at a very early stage at the beginning of 2023. It is still difficult to say what scales Nike will strive for, but their ambitions are quite impressive in this regard.

In such a way, we see that Nike has succeeded a bit in metaverses, augmented reality, and NFT collections. However, they try everything at the same time but when they focus on doing more in one of these spheres, they will definitely become a pretty competitive member of the market. 2023 will show how seriously Nike intends to conquer digital horizons.

Unity Technologies

The software creator for video game developers

Like in the case of other companies on our list, Unity is a company that is primarily famous among gamers but not cryptocurrency fans. Unity Technologies is famous for creating the Unity game engine, which is used by many video game developers. It has a lot of advantages that attract developers from the gaming world, mainly from indie studios.

Nevertheless, the fact that Unity Technologies is famous in the video game world does not mean that it can bring nothing to the metaverse sector. Instead, with the help of their product, nice projects can be created that work in the augmented reality and metaverse sectors.

A few developers of the virtual worlds are already using the instruments provided by Unity Technologies to achieve their objectives and their number will eventually keep growing. The Unity engine can provide one of the best solutions, which can supply developers with a software infrastructure that nicely fits the specificity of metaverses and the development of virtual 3D worlds.

At the moment of writing the material, the overall market capitalization of Unity Technologies surpasses the mark of $13,100,000,000. Like the other previously mentioned companies on our list, Unity Technologies suffered big losses last year. In the case of Unity, these losses amount to 67%.

NVIDIA

The graphics processing unit manufacturer

Everyone who knows even a little about the gaming world is familiar with the name of the company NVIDIA. The company can be easily called one of the two pillars of the graphics processing unit world that hold the video game industry. Besides GPU manufacturing, NVIDIA works on data science research, and artificial intelligence research, and makes big strides in the manufacture and invention of electronic circuits.

Every person and company has their understanding of the term “metaverse”. According to NVIDIA, the metaverse is “the 3D Internet”. Considering the specificity of virtual worlds and the opportunities they provide for users, it definitely makes sense. The company, which is famous for its massive GPU manufacturing, has created its platform called Omniverse, the idea of which is to realize the collaborative work on 3D design, world modeling, and cooperation between various 3D ecosystems. The remarkable thing is that the Omniverse system is based on the structure of the universal description of the scene, which was previously introduced by the company Pixar, which specializes in the production of computer-generated cartoons with computer graphics.

Like in the case of the video game industry, NVIDIA can become one of the key figures in the metaverse creation. The corporation’s technologies allow them to make brave steps and different experiments. In the future, it is not worth excluding that the majority of metaverses, which stand out with a high level of graphics digitalization and performance, will be working on a decent level thanks to the NVIDIA GPUs. In 2023, the company can continue its attempts to enter the world of metaverses and we can expect pretty interesting announcements from the American company.

At the moment of writing the material, the market capitalization of NVIDIA is more than $481,000,000,000. The corporation has suffered not that significantly recently, compared to the majority of the previously mentioned members of this list. In 2022, its shares lost only 14%.

Animoca Brands

One of the main companies associated with the metaverse industry.

The name Animoca Brands is as important in the metaverse sector as the name NVIDIA in the video game industry. If cryptography fans do not know who Animoca Brands are, they will certainly know about their main product — The Sandbox.

The Sandbox is the most famous metaverse, which continues to grow its popularity and money turnover. This virtual world has decent competitors in the face of Decentraland, Otherside, Upland, and others, however, many cryptography and virtual worlds fans consider The Sandbox to be the biggest and most influential representative of the metaverse sector.

In this virtual world, users have an opportunity to purchase virtual lands, like in any other commercially successful metaverse. Besides, its NFT format provides an opportunity to sell land and other virtual items, which can be owned by users and worn by their 3D avatars if it is an element of clothes.

The project The Sandbox stands out among its competitors with many partnership relations with big brands and celebrities who help to make the metaverse by Animoca Brands more popular. The significant partners include such companies as TIME, Ubisoft, Warner Music Group, and others.

Remarkably, Animoca Brands owns its metaverse but it does not stop them from investing in other similar projects, such as Decentraland and Upland, which we have mentioned above. Animoca Brands also created various NFT collections, however, their success is not as significant as what we can see in the case of The Sandbox. The SAND token, which is used as a currency in their metaverse, costs $0,78 per unit at the moment, has a capitalization of $1,170,000,000, and the level of daily trading conducted by traders is $300,000,000.

Meta

The company with the most fanatical metaverse fan as the head of the organization

The company Meta is famous for Mark Zuckerberg, the head of the organization, who can be easily called the most dedicated fan of the virtual world. He put the share value and his wealth, which depends on these shares, at stake to make all the efforts to develop the metaverse sectors and their projects developed by the Reality Labs division.

In October 2021, Zuckerberg decided to change the company’s name from Facebook to Meta to show how strongly he is dedicated to the idea of metaverses. Investors were confused later because Mark’s actions led to the stocks falling more than 70% in 2022.

Besides, the company fired Meta employees many times and the latest mass layoff left more than 11,000 people without their jobs. “Everything is for the development of metaverses” — Zuckerberg states. The Meta owner’s fortune dropped from $126,000,000,000+ to $37,000,000 in a moment. At the beginning of 2023, the situation stabilized a bit and the price increased by 50%+ of what was noticed at the end of 2022, however, stocks still have room to grow.

At the moment, the Reality Labs division is working on a VR device called Meta Quest and the metaverse Horizon Worlds. The company wants this place to become a meeting point for many users for further communication, new acquaintances, and other social interactions, which are widespread in real life and the Web2 technology of the Internet world. According to Mark Zuckerberg, someone has to make colossal efforts to change our daily life, which will partly transfer to metaverses in the end. Experts state that people will spend, at least, 1 hour in metaverses every day and it seems that Zuckerberg wants to take the biggest slice of this cake.

Conclusion

Now, we can witness the development of metaverses and many big players joining this industry, however, it is unclear at the moment how much people need these virtual worlds. If companies can demonstrate real reasons for people to start spending more time in metaverses in the future, everything might change.

Nevertheless, as it was said many times, the term “metaverse” can be interpreted differently by any person and it is pretty difficult to come to one definition for now. It is worth remembering that besides virtual reality, there is augmented reality, which is way closer to the real world than metaverses and even interacts with it actively. For example, with the help of such technologies, interior designers will be able to demonstrate to clients how their interiors can change and there are videos on the Internet of how online shops may look on mobile devices, which support augmented reality technologies.

Perhaps, people will be able to choose items and open their 3D projections in the future to look at all the details before making the final choice and paying for the order. It may seem futuristic, however, technologies are moving forward way faster with every decade, so this phenomenon might become widespread in a few years.

People's interest in the metaverse is still questionable and 2023 will show how much they are interested in virtual worlds. If companies do not make something significant this year and virtual worlds continue existing and attracting investments with the help of hype, the industry might collapse in theory. However, many experts analyze the prospects of the industry and think that the overall value of metaverses will reach the mark of $13,000,000,000 only in the Asian region.

It is not worth forgetting that there are companies that make a lot of profit in virtual worlds. For example, Renault, which we like to give as an example, has made the first industrial metaverse, which must ease their work because it includes copies of real factories, which manufacture cars. If everything works according to plan, the French car industry will save more than $330,000,000 on manufacturing processes because some parts will require 50-60% fewer resources than usual.

Generally speaking, it will be very interesting to follow the development of the metaverse. Perhaps, we will be witnessing a change in the history of humanity toward a utopian future. Or the dystopian one.