Orlando Bravo, Puerto Rican billonaire businessman has said The so-called metaverse has a “big time” investment case, CNBC reports
Bravo, co-founder and managing partner of private equity firm Thoma Bravo, told CNBC that he thinks “metaverse” is the big word of 2021.
“It’s investable and it’s going to be very big,” Bravo said in an interview with CNBC’s Annette Weisbach on Friday.
The metaverse is a sci-fi concept whereby humans put on some sort of headset or smart glasses that allows them to live, work and play in a virtual world much like the one depicted in the “Ready Player One” novel and movie. Depending on your point of view, it’s either a utopian dream or a dystopian nightmare.
The term metaverse was brought to limelight when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the change of Facebook company to Meta, and revealed that the essence of the na!e change was that the company is going to focus on metaverse.
“The metaverse is the next frontier just like social networking was when we got started,” he said at the time.
In the video, a Zuckerberg lookalike introduces viewers to “Icelandverse,” a place of “enhanced actual reality without silly-looking headsets.”
Since then , other software tech companies including Microsoft, Roblox, Nvidia and Britain’s Improbable are already working on building the software and hardware that could power the metaverse.
Thoma Bravo has more than $83 billion in assets under management and a portfolio that comprises more than 40 software companies. It has invested in the likes of cybersecurity firms McAfee and Barracuda, as well as enterprise software firm Dynatrace.
In addition to the metaverse, Bravo is also bullish on crypto and he owns an undisclosed amount of bitcoin.
“How could you not love crypto?” Bravo said at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference in September. “Crypto is just a great system. It’s frictionless. It’s decentralized. And young people want their own financial system. So it is here to stay.”