The latest iteration of the World Wide Web, dubbed Web3, is attracting the attention of some of the biggest technology companies in the world. Most of them are targeting the virtual version of the universe, christened the metaverse.
While Apple Inc. (AAPL, Financial) surprisingly decided against jumping into the metaverse craze, the likes of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT, Financial), Meta Platforms Inc. (FB, Financial) and Nvidia Inc. (NVDA, Financial) have all shown significant interest in what analysts think is a massive opportunity.
Investment banking giants Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS, Financial) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Financial) estimate the metaverse is potentially worth $8 trillion, which may explain why Microsoft agreed to cough up nearly $69 billion to buy Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI, Financial).
Most of the big tech metaverse companies are looking to provide the infrastructure that will run the entire ecosystem.
For instance, Nvidia is revamping its Omniverse platform with advanced features. It is an ecosystem that developers will use to build metaverse projects. On the other hand, Meta Platforms revealed its gigantic Supercomputer that will play a crucial role in helping artificial intelligence models to learn quickly and adapt to the multilingual environment that makes up the metaverse.
Microsoft showed a brave hand, investing $69 billion in Activision. CEO Satya Nadella said that Microsoft’s technology combined with Blizzard’s gaming products will help drive the metaverse gaming economy.
However, users of the metaverse are more interested in the smaller projects that they can interact with, or even use to create an extra source of income. In a recent report, Goldman Sachs said that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies will be widely used as currencies in the metaverse.
NFTs provide proof of ownership of digital products like music, tweets and digital art. They have also been widely adopted in the blockchain gaming industry, where they are used as in-game items, facilitating their play-to-earn gaming projects.
More recently, NFTs are being embraced in the video production and streaming sector. Popular short video platform Chingari recently launched a marketplace where artists and actors can share short video clips as NFTs.
The Chingari ecosystem is supported by their utility token, GARI, which also went live last week after raising $15 million in a funding round.
Venture capital firms are also playing a crucial role in the adoption of Web3 as they continue to back projects in decentralized finance, blockchain gaming, the metaverse and NFTs. Chingari’s latest funding round attracted leading venture captial firms in the GameFi sector.
Nonetheless, with more crypto companies looking to follow Coinbase Global Inc.’s (COIN, Financial) example by getting publicly listed, Web3 could be about to gain more mainstream traction.
Conclusion
Although the world's largest technology companies investing in Web3 will gain more attention from investors, emerging players like Chingari continue to gain traction, providing investors with more options for investing in the metaverse.
