Special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Hiro Metaverse Acquisitions (HMAI) has announced plans to float on the London Stock Exchange and raise up to £115 million through this listing.
HMAI is the metaverse-focused subsidiary of Hiro Capital, an investor in high-growth games, esports, streaming, and metaverse technology. In addition to the aforementioned sectors, HMAI’s targets will include Gen Z social networks.
Identifying and combining with businesses in target sectors is also part of HAMI’s strategy, with its sponsor team bringing experience from games and tech. Mobile game studios and blockchain game developers are among those being considered in the company’s acquisition search.
“We are launching Hiro Metaverse Acquisitions I S.A. in London because there is a tremendous video games industry here in the UK and Europe,” said Hiro Capital non-executive chairman Ian Livingstone.
“This region has talented entrepreneurs and brilliant creators who produce approximately one-third of all the video games content played worldwide. The region still only accounts for about 3 per cent of the industry’s global public market capitalisation.
“With our deep experience of the rapidly evolving gaming industry and the capital from this SPAC, we are ideally placed to identify and fund a target company that is further along its growth curve and still has high-value creation potential.”
Emerging and investing
Since establishing in 2019, Hiro Capital has completed 20 investments, with recent Series A investments including those in game-making platform DreamCraft Entertainment and Californian ad tech firm Frameplay.
“At Hiro, we back experienced, entrepreneurial games and metaverse teams building innovative companies with the opportunity to become very large. This SPAC allows us to invest in later-stage companies who we can help scale up quickly,” said HMAI COO Cherry Freeman.
HMAI CEO Luke Alvarez also commented: “Games are now the biggest media sector worldwide and are where the next big computing platform – the Metaverse – is emerging. With almost 3 billion gamers worldwide, games technologies have expanded beyond game studios into digital assets, creator platforms, Web-three worlds and even digital fitness and wellness – so the opportunity for innovators is large.”
Tech startup PortalOne recently revealed that it has raised $60 million following its oversubscribed Series A funding round.
