Music and sports stars invest $15M in Yoom
Music and sports personalities including Jimmy Iovine, Finneas O'Connell and Maverick Carter are among those investing $15 million in TetaVi, which has rebranded as Yoom.
The company, which produces immersive content for Metaverse and Web3 platforms, plans on enabling others to remotely use its technology with a smartphone, breaking down the barrier to immersive content creation
“This team and the proprietary technology they've built levels the playing field for creatives and widens the space where communities can grow. I'm inspired to help define what the future of entertainment can look like,” says Iovine, Co-founder of Interscope Records, Beats Electronics and other entertainment companies.
Artists and creators have used California-based Yoom’s cutting-edge volumetric technology to create new types of content offering novel social and community experiences. By opening its technology to anyone from the highest-caliber professional artist to anyone and everyone with a smartphone and an idea, Yoom will soon offer the ability to create such content and experiences to one and all.
The new funding will allow Yoom to build its lineup of influential talent and top-notch brand partnerships, as well as investment more in production, research and development and mobile app development.
The rebranding is designed to reflect the inclusiveness and authenticity that its new direction will bring.
“Our new name, Yoom, reflects the universal and meaningful experiences that our technology enables. It is the combination of ‘You and Me’, as we want to create a deeper connection between content creators and their audiences,” says Yoom CEO Gilad Talmon.
“It is also the sound of the second syllable of the word 'volume' since our technology allows you to create a digital version of yourself in 3D and with volume. Our new logo, a butterfly with symmetrical faces that appear as mirror images of each other, aims to convey creativity, freedom, duality and metamorphosis, symbolizing the passage from the real world to the digital world. The name Yoom represents who we are both as people and as a company: dynamic, bold, expressive and playful,” Talmon says.
The artists and executives who recently invested in Yoom have also signed agreements to help the company drive the future of immersive and interactive content in music, entertainment, gaming, sports and popular culture.
Joining Iovine are O’Connell, a Grammy Award-winning producer, singer and songwriter; sports-marketing businessman and media personality Carter, CEO of the Springhill Company; record exec Justin Lubliner, the CEO of the Darkroom; and Paul Wachter, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Main Street Advisors.
Seed investor Aaron Stone, former Senior Partner and Head of Media, Entertainment and Communications, and current adviser to Apollo Global Management, has been named as Yoom’s first non-founder Chairman. Stone has been with the company since its early days and has partnered with it to help guide the organization’s structure and strategy.
“We are at the inception of a period in which new AI-based technologies will revolutionize the way we create and experience content, and interact socially,” Stone says.
“Yoom will partner with artists to create content that can engender enhanced feelings of presence, enabling new and different ways for people to emotionally engage and form communities. I am particularly excited that Yoom will provide the ability to create extraordinary content and experiences previously unavailable to anyone, to virtually everyone,” he says.
Several months ago, in partnership with Yoom, the Los Angeles Kings became the first team in the National Hockey League to enter the metaverse. In the near term, Yoom plans to introduce its first major projects in areas such as music, gaming, TV and location-based entertainment.
