The leading location-based VR startup, Sandbox VR, is gearing up to scale its operations worldwide with fresh funding of $37 million as the after-effects of the pandemic begin to diminish. The company aims to create an immersive social experience that combines full-body motion capture and VR technologies to take users into an exciting space with their friends.

The San Francisco and Hong Kong-headquartered company raised the Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Growth Fund, supporting several firms, such as Alibaba and Craft, at their inflection points. With the latest round, Sandbox VR has now raised $119 million to date.

The company plans to invest the funds towards opening ten new retail locations worldwide. These include Paramus, London, and Toronto in 2022 and two corporate and two franchise locations.

It would also make investments towards its internal studio to enhance content cadence and develop a software development kit (SDK) to provide third-party developers access to the Sandbox platform. The company is also looking to create some kind of wireless technology to eliminate the need for a heavy VR hardware backpack.

“With more stores on the way, we’ll be ramping up our internal studios as well as developing our SDK (software development kit) to open up publishing soon,” said Sandbox VR CEO and co-founder Steve Zhao.

The company aims to augment human interaction through technology by entering the metaverse landscape eventually over the next few years.

“As we continue to innovate in the VR industry, we’ll move towards the virtualization of our physical spaces. One day, it’ll be like stepping into a portal where players can embody their persistent virtual avatars,” Zhao added.

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