genies
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 avatars for each music label’s entire roster of artists.
The startup wants to “build an avatar for every single person on Earth,” CEO Akash Nigam 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 metaverse, the much-hyped iteration of the internet where users may one day work, shop and socialize.
Genies CEO Akash Nigam.Courtesy of Genies
Genies has started to roll out avatar creator tools for consumers in beta, testing it with small groups of invite-only users. The company has also launched an NFT marketplace called The Warehouse, where creators can buy, sell and trade avatar creations, including wearable items. Genies gives creators “full ownership and commercialization rights” of their Genie avatar creations, according to the company, and collects a 5% transaction fee each time an avatar NFT is sold, a company spokesperson told dot.LA.
“We believe avatar ecosystems are going to shape Web3 the same way that mobile apps defined Web2,” Nigam said in a statement Tuesday. “In Web3, Gen Z avatar ecosystem builders are going to be the leaders of innovation and, through our creator tools, we strive to empower their wildest imaginations, ideas and experiences as avatar creations.”
Genies had raised around $100 million in funding prior to the new Silver Lake-led round. The company also recently received an investment from former Disney boss Bob Iger, who joined the company’s board last month.
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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Tu joins Genies as its director of engineering. Genies CEO and founder Akash Nigam told dot.LA Tu's main mandate is hiring engineers to continue developing its avatar creation platform and digital marketplace, where users can buy and sell digital collectibles and wearable items for their virtual selves.
Tu is the first engineering executive the company's hired since its launch in 2017, but it plans to devote a big chunk of its recent $65 million Series B raise to attracting new talent.
"I think we've landed quite a few Snap employees for a few reasons," Nigam said. "Genies and Snap are probably the two biggest social companies on the Westside in LA, so I think that's an attraction for people that are already local."
The company already has some big celebrity names using its tech to make and share avatars -- including Justin Bieber, Rihanna and hip-hop tycoons Migos -- and the next step is to bring in more users.
George "YJ" Tu is Genies' new director of engineering.
Nigam said the company's hired close to 30 new employees in the last three months, with about 80% of those hires being engineers. He added that roughly 90 people work at Genies, and estimated that 10% of them are ex-Snap employees.
"I think from a product perspective, we share a lot of philosophies and we're very similar in the way that we scheme and we game plan. Snap always is kind of shooting a few years in advance specifically within the social category."
Matt Sibka, Genies' vice president of recruiting, spent three and a half years at Snap creating a team for its CEO Evan Spiegel and was hired to do the same at Genies earlier this year. Genies competes with Snap's Bitmoji avatars, which got a 3D upgrade this July.
"Eighty percent of new spend after our fundraise, and anything moving forward for the next two years, is all going to be on engineering to become an engineering powerhouse," Nigam said. Genies has raised $110 million to date and Nigam previously told dot.LA the company wants to make "Ninety nine point nine percent of its revenue from selling digital goods.
Nigam said that the synergy between Genies and Snap wasn't a conscious choice, but noted that both companies have a similar vision – to advance augmented reality and encourage people to adopt virtual avatars that they can increasingly use as an extension of how they express themselves online.
Nigam's plan is to integrate Genies avatars into as many applications as possible. Currently the company has a deal with Facebook's Giphy that will let users bring their avatar with them to platforms where Giphy is integrated, like Facebook, TikTok or Snapchat – but Nigam said it wants to bring its avatars to popular games like "Roblox" too.
"That's the first API partnership, but we want to have hundreds of those," Nigam said. "So all of a sudden if you get ported into 'Roblox,' you can get any avatar."
Genies' next big goal is getting Generation Z to buy into the NFT hype by creating unique items for their avatars and then trading them. Genies is working with Dapper Labs, which operates NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties, two of the most popular NFT exchanges, to create its own blockchain-based system for creating, verifying and selling digital goods.
Genies plans to make the marketplace available by the end of this year. Right now it's only accessible to celebrities, but Nigam said it'll open a beta version to customers by year's end.
"It almost becomes like a login authentication button, where you can port your Genie and your digital goods associated with it from one environment to the next, and in that case, we're kind of creating a new digital identity layer," Nigam said.
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