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Former Disney boss Bob Iger is entering the metaverse.
In his first career move since leaving the Walt Disney Co. board last year, Iger is investing and joining the board of Marina del Rey-based Genies, a startup that builds virtual avatars. The partnership brings Iger, who was Disney’s CEO from 2005 to 2020, to a company with grand ambitions for the metaverse—the potential next iteration of the internet that could bring us extensive and immersive online worlds.
Founded in 2017, Genies established itself by making avatars for celebrities, from Rihanna to Russell Westbrook, who have used the online lookalikes for social media and sponsorship opportunities. The company claims to have “99% celebrity avatar market share” after securing partnerships with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group to make versions for those labels’ entire rosters of artists.
But that’s only the start for Genies founder and CEO Akash Nigam. The startup’s mission is to “build an avatar for every single person on Earth,” he told dot.LA in February. Avatars—digital figures that represent a particular person—may be the way people interact with each other in the 3D virtual worlds of the much-hyped metaverse, where users may one day work, shop and socialize.
Iger, who was the board chairman of Burbank-based Disney until December, said in a statement that he spent the last few months getting to know Nigam and is “excited about his vision and how it will be fulfilled.” Iger reportedly met with two dozen startup executives and recently invested in five tech firms, including Genies, according to the Wall Street Journal. A company spokesperson declined to share how much Iger personally invested in Genies.
Bob Iger and Genies founder and CEO Akash Nigam.Courtesy of Genies
“I’ve always been drawn to the intersection between technology and art, and Genies provides unique and compelling opportunities to harness the power of that combination to enable new forms of creativity, expression and communication,” Iger said in a statement.
Genies has started to roll out its consumer “avatar tools” in beta, with the goal of allowing anyone to create avatars and digital wearable items that consumers own as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Genies collects a 5% transaction fee each time a wearable NFT is sold, a company spokesperson said.
"We believe that avatar ecosystems are going to be the mobile apps of web3,” Nigam said in a statement.
Genies, a 100-person company that has raised roughly $100 million in funding to date, now has one of the most well-known entertainment executives in its corner. Iger grew Disney into a media juggernaut through the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm and 21st Century Fox. The deals positioned Disney well for the streaming era, giving it the content arsenal needed to take on the likes of Netflix and Amazon.
“An ambitious vision calls for rare mindshare and I can’t think of a better creative and product thinker than Bob to collaborate with in bringing this all to reality,” Nigam said in a statement.
The Genies partnership comes with more than a board seat. After leading one of the biggest names in animation for 15 years, Iger now has a cartoonish digital avatar of himself, too.
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