Virtual Avatar Firm Hologram Raises $6.5M Seed Round

The metaverse is increasingly becoming a beacon for self-expression.

Virtual avatar company Hologram has raised $6.5 million in seed funding led by Polychain Capital, the company said Thursday in a press release. The round also saw participation from Nascent, Inflection, The Operating Group, Quantstamp, Neon DAO, Foothill Ventures, South Park Commons, and several angel investors including Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda.

Hologram, founded by Tong Pow and Hongzi Mao in 2021, partners with online communities to foster self-expression and digital identity in the metaverse.

Pow told CoinDesk that Hologram plans to use the funding to make new key hires such as engineers and artists. They are also looking to expand partnerships with other digital communities and individuals seeking to enter the Web3 space.

Pow, who previously worked at 0x Labs, said that Hologram’s “most compelling feature” is the ability to take on any identity in the metaverse, which can’t be done in the current Web2 world.

“We've created new identities through social media profiles, through different usernames, which we're already very familiar with. But I think the ways we can express ourselves beyond our physical identities really remained static with the examples I listed before,” said Pow.

Hologram partners with brands, online communities, and individual creators to create unique identities in the metaverse. Hologram recently partnered with Anata NFT, an Anime NFT avatar collection, and is also working with other projects such as Cool Cats, Deadfellaz and Crypto Covens.

Self-expression in the metaverse is an attractive feature for those entering the space. That’s one of the reasons why brands featured their non-fungible token (NFT) clothes for Decentraland avatars during Metaverse Fashion Week, and why NFT avatar collections have become so popular.

However, another benefit emerges from the product: improved pseudonymity.

According to Pow, Hologram is making pseudonymity in the metaverse more legitimate by protecting users’ personal information behind their digital persona ownership, which can be beneficial for “high stake use cases,” such as interviews or other public appearances.