Hadean, a distributed computing firm backed by Epic Games, secures $30 million to power the metaverse.

Founded in the UK, Hadean is a distributed, spatial computing business that aims to create the foundation for the developing metaverse. a funding round from a prestigious group of backers that includes Epic Games and Tencent.

 

Hadean was established in London in 2015 with the broad goal of making “supercomputer levels of processing power available to everybody,” according to a TechCrunch article from 2017 when the business was still in beta. Hadean has evolved over the years for many use-cases and has become a prominent player, particularly in the gaming industry, where it drives blockbuster games like Minecraft.

 

Hadean’s main goal is to assist programmers in scaling their code bases to accommodate software that needs a lot of processing power, which Minecraft especially needs when it involves online multiplayer. Hadean’s spatial simulation library integrates with all the popular gaming engines, which saves MMO (massively multiplayer online game) and other online game developers from having to impose player caps or employ other types of (limited) technical gimmickry to get around issues brought on by having hundreds or more players playing at once. The key is to avoid the dreaded “lag” while preserving the complexity, realism, and depth of an offline single-player console game.

The Hadean platform eliminates “excessive middleware, orchestration, and overengineering,” as the business puts it, and dynamically provisions more or fewer resources as a game requires, which is accomplished through the wonders of distributed computing.

 

However, the underlying technology is applicable to practically every use-case, including resource-intensive enterprise apps, web 3.0, blockchain, and the metaverse. Hadean received a contract from the British Army in July to construct a simulated training environment for land combat.

 

colossal investment
And against that backdrop, Hadean has now attracted a number of eminent supporters keen to invest early on while the metaverse is still in its infancy.

 

Hadean initially received about $18 million in funding from backers like Chinese tech giant Tencent and InQTel, a not-for-profit venture capital business based in Virginia, the United States, as the Telegraph newspaper first revealed last month [paywalled]. As it turned out, the initial announcement was made a little too soon because Hadean was still in the middle of finalising the funding round, which is what it is revealing today.

Lead investor Molten Ventures (previously Draper Esprit), Tencent, 2050 Capital, Alumni Ventures, Aster Capital, Entrepreneur First, InQtel, and the great Epic Games—which also happens to be a Hadean client—are included on the whole list of (known) supporters. In fact, Epic Games has already given Hadean money in the form of a MegaGrant, which is essentially a grant for businesses to assist their Unreal Engine-related initiatives.

 

Hadean CEO Craig Beddis explained that because Epic Games was late to the series A round, it had to invest using a convertible note, which is essentially a short-term loan that would turn into equity.

 

A second indication of why Epic Games is now investing directly in Hadean is the company’s recent $2 billion financing for the construction of what it calls a kid-friendly metaverse.

 

Marc Petit, VP of Epic’s Unreal Engine Ecosystem, said in a statement that Hadean’s computer power “will offer the infrastructure that’s needed as we seek to establish a scalable metaverse.” “The company’s technology enables enormous numbers of concurrent users and unlocks new capabilities for creators and developers, complementing Epic’s Unreal Engine.”

Given the ongoing geopolitical tensions between China and the U.S., Tencent’s participation is also noteworthy. According to Beddis, Hadean ultimately decided to accept less money from Tencent than what was initially offered in order to continue to be CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) compliant and avoid a national security review.

 

Hadean is well-financed to build on its current traction in the gaming, government, and corporate sectors and power a wide range of web 3.0 and metaverse applications with an additional $30 million in the bank in addition to its previously raised seed rounds totaling roughly $16.5 million.

 

In order to assist us make better decisions and ultimately enhance the quality of our lives in the physical world, Beddis stated that “Hadean’s aim is to bridge the physical and virtual worlds.” “Today’s virtual worlds offer a constrained experience; they are compact, compartmentalised, and unsafe. So, these are the technological difficulties we’re dealing with today. However, we think that the ultimate success and widespread adoption of the metaverse will depend on how simple it is for creators to scale up their own experiences using open and reliable metaverse-as-a-service technology.