Lighthouse Labs raises $7 million in seed round to build metaverse search engine

Montreal-based crypto startup Lighthouse Labs raised $7 million in seed funding ahead of the summer launch of its metaverse search engine.

Following the round led by Accel, BlockTower and Animoca Brands, the company said in a statement that the platform would make places, events, communities and people across different metaverses searchable from one entry point.

"Right now, discovery in the metaverse feels more like gaming, where you need to jump from one game to the next to find things, than the internet, where you can access everything from a single entry point," Jonathan Brun, co-founder and CEO of Lighthouse, said in the statement.

For on-chain data, co-founder and CTO Justine Massicotte explained that the company would use subgraphs to index information, while for off-chain data, Lighthouse will collect it through direct partnerships with metaverse companies.

Although the company said it wasn't sharing its valuation or which metaverse companies it was currently working with, it highlighted its links to metaverse companies through the funding round. Investor Animoca Brands, according to its website, has 21 metaverse companies in its portfolio, and its sister company The Sandbox's founders are general partners at Sparkle Ventures, another participating investor.

White Star Capital, Gemini Frontier Fund, and The Graph core developer StreamingFast also participated in the round, joined by individual investors including Nansen founder Alex Svanevik, POAP founder Patricio Worthalter, Messari founder Ryan Selkis, and Exclusible founder Thibault Launay.