CEO and co-founder Bobby Voicu said we’re at the very beginning of ‘what mixed reality could do for gamers’.
MixRift, a mixed reality gaming studio based in Dublin, has raised $1.6m in pre-seed funding led by Outsized Ventures and Underline Ventures.
Betting on a gap in the demand and supply of mixed reality games in the market, MixRift will use the funding to accelerate development of titles for headsets such as the Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro.
In an announcement, the start-up said that while Meta has reportedly sold more than 20m Quest headsets, mixed reality content continues to be “thin on the ground”.
The company described its approach as developing games that are easy to pick up yet deeply immersive. According to the team, because wearables “are as much computing devices as they are gaming”, mixed reality will appeal to a wider set of users.
“We’re at the very beginning of what mixed reality could do for gamers,” said serial entrepreneur MixRift CEO Bobby Voicu.
“We know there is a huge untapped market, and our founding team knows what it takes to create the games that hook those players in. This puts us in a unique position to capitalise on the opportunity.”
Voicu, who previously launched mobile games studio Mavenhut, founded MixRift along with CPO David Pripas and CTO Andrei Vaduva. Other than Outsized and Underline, Sean O’Sullivan’s SOSV and a number of angel investors also invested in the round.
MixRift, which has offices in Dublin and Bucharest, will use the investment to continue game development and release further titles later in the year. It believes focusing on game mechanics over specific titles will help “quickly identify what resonates with audiences”.
“Mixed reality has immense potential, demonstrated by the likes of Meta and Apple committing heavily to the sector,” said Lomax Ward of Outsized Ventures. “MixRift’s founding team has deep knowledge and experience, positioning the company to take advantage of both the demand from players and the growing interest in MR.”
Disclosure: SOSV is an investor in Silicon Republic.
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