NextVR Lands $80 Million in Funding for Live VR Broadcasting

LAGUNA BEACH: Ruigang Li’s CMC Holdings is among the new investors on board the latest round of funding for NextVR, which is building out its footprint in live virtual-reality broadcasting.

The majority of funding from the Series B funding round comes from high-profile investors throughout Asia in the entertainment, content and technology markets, as well as new U.S. investors including all participating U.S. investors from the Series A round. They include CITIC Guoan Information Industry, NetEase, SoftBank Corp., VMS Investments Group, Founder H Fund, China Assets and Spectrum 28.

All the investors from the $30.5 million Series A round participated in the Series B round. They include lead investor Formation Group, Time Warner Investments, Comcast Ventures, Stephen Ross’s RSE Ventures, Mandalay Entertainment CEO Peter Guber, The Madison Square Garden Co. and dick clark productions.

“With this new funding, we will continue to build NextVR’s virtual-reality platform to meet the needs of the world’s largest fan bases around live sports and music content,” said Brad Allen, NextVR’s executive chairman. “Having the support of Asia’s biggest players provides us with significant resources for creating and distributing both local and international content in China, Korea and Japan.”

Sun Lu, president of CITIC Guoan, said, “We trust in the future of live experiences in VR and NextVR has proven it is the company that will deliver on that promise. We are making an investment in NextVR because we believe the company’s global platform for live VR will win the hearts and minds of users everywhere.”

“NextVR continues to revolutionize how live virtual-reality content will be created and delivered,” added Scott Levine, the managing director of Time Warner Investments and a NextVR board observer. “Consumers are excited about the technology and NextVR’s platform is clearly the leader in this emerging space.”