Anshe Chung scores venture capital funding
By Adam Reuters
SECOND LIFE, March 2 (Reuters) - Anshe Chung Studios, the giant Second Life property development firm which has also expanded into metaverse services, confirmed on Thursday it has sold 10 percent of itself to a German venture capital firm.
European Founders Fund is backed by brothers Marc, Oliver and Alexander Samwer, the founders of the mobile phone ringtone company Jamba and also the company that became eBay Germany. Their investment, first reported in the German newspaper Frankfurther Allgemeine, comes directly on the heels of a $10 million round of funding this week for metaverse services firm The Electric Sheep Company, which received investments from U.S. media company CBS and venture capital group Gladwyne Partners.
Anshe Chung Studios declined to disclose the amount of funding, or the total valuation of the business.
Media investors are betting that the services surrounding virtual worlds like Second Life may be as profitable as companies such as Linden Lab that run the worlds themselves. At least one other metaverse services firm will announce a major investment within the next month, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
Wuhan, China-based Anshe Chung Studios, whose eponymous founder claims to have accumulated more than US$1 million worth of Second Life assets, has branched out to other virtual worlds including IMVU, There.com and Entropia.
“Our business is based more and more on people and talent and less and less on a certain platform,” said Guni Greenstein (Guni Graef in the real world), who is the husband and business partner of Anshe Chung (Ailin Graef) in a Second Life interview.
