ReadyPlayerMe Shut Down At The End Of January After Raising $56 Million In 2022

The avatar service ReadyPlayerMe shut down at the end of last month.

Techcrunch in 2022 when ReadyPlayerMe raised $56 million:

“Our bigger vision is to connect the metaverse through avatars,” said Timmu Toke, co-founder and CEO, Ready Player Me, in an interview. “There may be metaverse [experiences] owned by big companies, who will make all the rules, but there is a vision of an open one where people can travel, built by millions of developers, where no one controls the whole thing. Like the internet. We’re trying to push the world towards that metaverse.”

Competing as a startup to be more “open” than Facebook/Meta while simultaneously co-opting Mark Zuckerberg’s “metaverse” branding was not a good idea.

The service sold to Netflix in December for an undisclosed amount.