Month: September 2022

European companies, investors and talent are all vying for a ticket on the Metaversum hype train. Even political heavyweights are making moves — or at least declarations.

French President Emmanuel Macron wants to build “a European metaverse” to challenge US and Chinese tech giants. Meanwhile, EU digital boss Margrethe Vestager is considering new antitrust law. But their ambitions are far from being realized.

“The fact is that there is no relevant European big tech player in this whole Metaversum future,” says Rolf Illenberger, co-founder of Munich’s VRdirect, a virtual reality platform for businesses. “It’s defined by US and Asian players. Those are the two regions where this technology will develop.”

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In the US, tech titans Meta, Microsoft and Apple are all set for starring roles Roblox and decentralized already offer popular proto-metaverse platforms.

Your biggest global challengers are in Asia. Bytedance, the owner of TikTok and VR hardware giant Pico, is its closest competitor, but further competition is emerging from Huawei, Tencent and co The sandbox virtual world.

European startups lag behind their American and Asian counterparts.

Europe, on the other hand, is largely limited to niche providers and start-ups. These range from Finland’s Varjo, which makes high-end headsets, to Estonia’s Ready Player Me, a cross-game avatar platform that recently raked in $56 million in a funding round led by VC giant Andreessen Horowitz.

Jake Stott, CEO of Web3 and advertising agency Metaverse hype, is also optimistic that Europe’s renowned fintech sector can spawn future payment providers in space. However, he acknowledges that they face significant challenges.

“Historically, European startups have stayed behind their US and Asian counterparts when it comes to making unicorns,” he says. “Europe also lags behind the US in terms of venture capital raised. This is perhaps one of the areas where government support can help the continent’s fledgling metaverse ecosystem – by removing barriers to growth and incentivizing VCs.”

Europe’s Metaverse funding problem

Petri Rajahalme has his own plans to fill the funding gap. Finnish entrepreneur and his business partner Dave Hayes recently started FOV ventures, the first VC firm specializing in early-stage Metaverse companies in Europe. In March, the duo announced a €25 million fund for startups in the pre-seed or seed phase.

“We don’t lack talent, that’s for sure,” says Rajalhlme. “If you look at historical M&A, many companies are in the US [businesses] talent is coming from Europe… The big question is how do you keep that talent in Europe?”

Rajahalme (right) was formerly the managing director of Nordic XR Startups Fund, while Haynes previously ran HTC’s $100 million Vive X fund in EMEA. Photo credit: FOV Ventures

The talent pipeline often flows toward the best financial incentives. Finland, for example, offers free and quality education, but post-graduation salaries are not comparable to those in Silicon Valley.

EU grants can offer some help with scaling, but applying is immensely time-consuming and funding is limited. FOV Ventures prefers to retain talent in Europe by providing early stage funding and go-to-market expertise.

A key component of the strategy is an “edge network” of Metaverse professionals from established players like Meta and Decentraland. These experts can provide funding and advice on working with large platforms.

Rajahalme also wants European investors to work together to challenge US resources.

“As VCs, we should be working very closely here in Europe to share knowledge, business processes and insights – and also help at the grassroots level,” he says. “This is a big wave, but it’s a wave that’s just beginning and we need to get more and more people involved.”

Rajahalme has been investing in this wave since 2016, but he admits that the metaverse only crept into the mainstream after Facebook was rebranded to meta.

That doesn’t mean the Metaverse is now widely understood. In fact, the nebulous nature of the concept poses both problems and opportunities.

Build the unknown

members of both European Commission and houses of Parliament have called for regulation of the metaverse. However, there is a problem: they do not yet understand exactly what they are regulating.

“As legislators, we now have to think about how we can regulate something [that] is not there, or [that] already exists, but on a smaller scale,” said MEP Axel Voss a recent round table.

Voss (left), a German MEP, and Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner, lead the EU’s push for metaverse regulation. Source: Martin Kraft and the European Parliament (edited)

Definitions of the metaverse abound. Neal Stephenson, who coined the term in his 1992 novel snow crash, describes the real version as “3D Internet”. Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, envisions “a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces” and “an embodied internet where you are, rather than just looking at it.”

Rajahalme prefers the description given by co-investor Matthew Ball:

“A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds synchronously and persistently used by a virtually unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence and with continuity of data such as identity, history, permissions, objects, communications and payments.”

All of these definitions have room for numerous use cases—and charlatans.

Almost real or just thrown together buzzwords?

if You trust Meta (and who wouldn’t?), the Metaverse will move us seamlessly between immersive digital spaces for work, education, play, and seemingly every other aspect of our physical world.

Some elements of this grand vision already exist. Virtual worlds are the mainstay of online gaming while VR vacation, Immersive Workplaces, AR training simulationsand “Industrial Metaverse” are also available to consumers.

Siemens and Nvidia are collaborating to create photorealistic digital twins that are connected to each other in real time to real factories. Source: Siemens/Nvidia.

This variety of applications can play to the strengths of different European ecosystems. For example, the Nordic countries can capitalize on their outstanding gaming sector, while Germany’s industrial economy offers promising foundations for B2B services in the metaverse.

However, critics argue that many “metaverse” vendors are merely repackaging existing technologies under an all-encompassing tagline. Their individual applications are also far removed from integration. All attempts to enforce interoperability across platforms will fraught with design challenges.

Illenberger, the founder of VRdirect, has further doubts about the decentralization of the metaverse. He predicts that major Chinese and US tech companies will remain gatekeepers to the dominant platforms.

“It’s going to be Meta, it’s going to be Apple, it’s going to be Bytedance — they’re going to control the ecosystem,” he says. “If you’re an app developer, you could develop an app for a Varjo, but your target audience will be [tiny]. So they will be developing apps for Meta and Apple.”

These future Metaverse rulers are now entering the Crosshairs of EU legislators proclaiming that strongly privacyand antitrust law Regulation is a competitive advantage.

Not everyone agrees.

set rules

Some Metaverse companies, developers and investors are concerned that EU regulations are hampering innovation.

Rajahalme, founder of FOV Ventures, shares an anecdote about a panel discussion on artificial intelligence developments in the US and China. The EU officials present said their goal is to become the best regulators for AI.

“It’s like when Europeans started car production and said we want to be the best at making stop signs,” he jokes.

Complying with European data protection regulations is a nightmare.

Illenberger, whose company offers bespoke VR experiences for businesses, has seen the downside of strict regulation.

A problem arose from VR headsets that use outward-facing cameras for environment recognition. They can therefore easily breach EU requirements for consent from people who could be accidentally filmed in a workplace.

These risks have prompted large organizations like Siemens to introduce dedicated VR rooms that reduce the risk of breaches. But these facilities are impractical for some businesses—and prohibitive for others.

“It’s a nightmare to even use Metaverse technologies in compliance with European data protection laws,” he says. “You have to film your surroundings for the device to work.”

The speed at which such rules are changing can hamper innovation — and push pioneers to Asia or the USA.

The Reality of a European Metaverse

While European companies can play an important role in the metaverse, Macron’s dream of competing with global tech giants is imaginative.

Instead of fighting against the incumbents, European companies could be more successful by working with them. VRdirect, for example, has built a business supporting headsets developed by Meta, Pico, and HTC.

Illenberger argues that such interoperability offers opportunities in the fragmented market. He’s also confident his company can benefit from tough EU regulations, as companies will seek his services from Silicon Valley loyalists with little interest in the regulations.

“It’s kind of a competitive advantage for us,” he says. “But in terms of Europe as a region compared to the US and Asia, that’s a big hurdle.”

As for Macron’s vision of a European metaverse that rivals the tech titans while protecting the continent’s rules and culture?

“That’s wishful thinking.”

Tech is a notoriously male-dominated field. According to a recent Statista survey, as of 2021, more than 90% of software developers identified as male and less than 6% as female. But don’t let these discouraging statistics fool you. Despite being underrepresented in STEM careers, women have made some massive contributions to technology over the years.

For Women’s History Month, we wanted to highlight some of these influential women and show how their contributions to the world changed things for themselves, those who came after them, and society at large.

Annie Easley, 1933-2011

NASA

Computer scientists, mathematicians and rocket scientists

Annie Easley worked for the Lewis Research Center (now referred to as the Glenn Research Center). She also worked with NASA and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which existed before NASA. One of Easley’s most notable achievements was her work on the Centaur project, which helped make future space travel possible.

Her work contributed to the Cassini probe in 1997, and she also worked to help other African Americans register to vote. In fact, she’s been into battery-powered vehicles for a long time, even before companies like Tesla and Rivian were household names.

Ada Lovelace, 1815-1852

Donaldson Collections/Getty Images

Creator of the first computer algorithm

Ada Lovelace shaped the world in the mid-19th century, at a time when not only was it highly unusual for women to study STEM subjects, but computers as we know them today didn’t even exist.

Lovelace was fascinated by the brain and other disciplines of science and technology. In 1833 she met a man named Charles Babbage who had developed an early calculating machine called the Analytical Engine. Lovelace translated one of Babbage’s lectures into English and added notes. In her notes, she included an algorithm that enabled Babbage’s machine to compute Bernoulli numbers, and as it turned out, this was the first time a computer algorithm had been published.

Because of her published algorithm, Lovelace is often credited as the first female computer programmer.

Hedy Lamarr, 1914-2000

The mother of WiFi

When some people think of Hedy Lamarr, they often just think of a beautiful actress. But there is so much more to Lamarr than meets the eye. Hedy, along with another inventor (named George Antheil), developed a radio-based torpedo guidance system that was immune to jamming. At first, few people took the actress seriously, and her patent eventually expired without being used in the real world. However, Lamarr and Antheil’s technology was later used in many of our essential technologies today, including Wi-Fi and GPS.

In 2014, Lamarr and Antheil were inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame.

Reshma Saujani, 1975-present

Founder of Girls Who Code

Girls Who Code is an organization dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion in tech. The organization has helped nearly half a million girls and reached 500 million people since its inception.

Reshma Saujani is the founder of Girls Who Code, but she is also an activist and advocate working to close the gender pay gap. With all the young women Reshma has helped, she totally deserves a spot on our list of the most influential women in tech.

Susan Wojcicki, 1968-present

Former YouTube CEO

Since it launched in 2005, YouTube has fundamentally changed the way we consume content online. It has enabled ordinary people to become stars, influencers, and helpful tutors for everything from relationship advice to cosmetic tips.

Susan Wojcicki was previously a senior vice president at Google and one of the company’s earliest employees, but the Harvard graduate eventually became YouTube’s CEO in 2014. She is an inspiration to young women around the world based on her hard work, persistence and success in the tech industry.

Radia Perlman, 1951-present

Baylor

Creator of the spanning tree protocol

Radia Perlman attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Few women took part in these STEM programs during that time, so it’s quite impressive that she’s managed to make a name for herself.

Perlman’s work had a significant impact on the technology field – specifically how networks move data and organize themselves. Their most notable creation is the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP): a set of network design rules that helped improve the Internet. Others have expanded on the technology since Perlman invented it, but it was their creation that paved the way for the modern, ultra-fast networks we enjoy today.

Karen Sparck Jones, 1935-2007

University of Cambridge

computer scientist

Karen Sparck-Jones was a self-taught computer programmer at a time when there were very few female programmers in the field. Her most notable contributions have focused on inverse document frequency and index term weighting—two major concepts that helped develop the modern search engines we have today.

Every time you search Google for a recipe, ask Google for the best Thai restaurant, or search for which robot vacuum you should buy, Sparck-Jones’ work helps ensure the search results that are returned are helpful.

Editor’s Recommendations

Scientists at the University of Oxford recently published the results of a mind-blowing experiment in which they entwined two atomic clocks at a record-breaking two meters apart.

In front: Atomic clocks have been in widespread use since the 1950s. They are used in myriad applications ranging from managing fairness in the stock market to enabling spacecraft to be navigated at extreme speeds.

The Oxford team’s experiment involved a relatively new wrinkle in the formula called the optical atomic clock.

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While traditional atomic clocks typically rely on exciting atoms (read: zapping them with microwaves) at precise frequencies, the optical variant uses a lattice of laser beams to trap and isolate individual atoms.

With the optical technique, the researchers essentially measure light-emitting atomic transitions in contrast to those that emit microwaves. This allows scientists to make more robust measurements.

What makes the Oxford team’s experiment exciting is that they became entangled two separate atomic clocks about two meters apart.

According to the team’s research paper:

Measurements on independent systems are limited by the standard quantum limit; Measurements on entangled systems can exceed the standard quantum limit to reach the highest precision allowed by quantum theory – the Heisenberg limit.

Background: Scientists have successfully entangled atomic clocks at the microscopic level, but to the best of our knowledge, this is the greatest distance at which two optical atomic clocks have ever been entangled.

In essence, the Oxford team have managed to create a two-node network of atomic clocks at a very useful distance – one that could theoretically be scaled up.

Furthermore, hypothetically speaking, there is no limit to the number or type of nodes that could be added to a network of entangled atomic clocks.

Scientists currently use a math-based consensus between tens or hundreds of different atomic clocks to get the most accurate readings possible. But entangled clocks are theoretically capable of much greater accuracy.

Take fast: The possible implications for this research are enormous. The more accurately we can measure the passage of time, the closer we can come to solving some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

If we’re able to engineer a vast network of atomic clocks spreading out into space, it’s possible we could begin to construct a sort of inverted picture of the universe that reveals dark matter in real time.

US and Canadian researchers predicted the usefulness of such a network in a 2014 article detailing a dark matter detector based on synchronized atomic clocks:

During the encounter with an expansive dark matter object as it sweeps through the network, initially synchronized clocks become desynchronized. Time differences between spatially separated clocks are expected to have a unique signature that encodes the spatial structure of the defect and its interaction strength with atoms.

In other words, if dark matter is out there, the Oxford team’s recent breakthrough could be our best lead yet. And the best thing is that there are not many downsides to continuing this research. Even if the dark matter theory doesn’t work, there are countless practical applications for more accurate atomic clocks.

H/t: Mike Mcrae, Science Alert