Web3 startup Spatial Labs raised $10 million in a seed funding round led by Blockchain Capital and supported by Marcy Venture Partners, founded by billionaire rapper Jay-Z. Spatial’s total funding is $14 million after the new round and its $4 million pre-seed funding. Jay-Z could show up in metaverse news.
Spatial Labs made the LNQ One Chip, which is a 13-millimeter microchip that can be sewn or glued into real clothes. Near-field communication (NFC) technology lets a smartphone scan each chip to get information about the object and make a digital copy of it that can be worn in the metaverse. Because each physical chip on Polygon is linked to an NFT, brands have many chances to add information or unique content to the chip’s metadata.
Iddris Sandu, a Ghanaian-American businessman who is 25 years old, started Spatial Labs in 2019. Here Sandu talked about his plans for the hardware company.
What is LNQ chip technology?
Sandu has many ideas about how to improve his LNQ chip technology. First of all, he wants people who buy physical goods with the chip to be able to quickly and easily get a digital version of that same product that can be used on metaverse platforms without having to buy the same thing twice.
Sandu said, “We think our approach is going to create much more of an equitable metaverse,” Sandu told Decrypt. “If you look at economies of scale, people don’t have the luxury of buying things twice over and over again.”
He also talked about how LNQ might be able to offer authentication services for high-end brands like Gucci, Balmain, and Prada, many of which already have plans for the metaverse.
Sandu also tells his customers to think of creative ways to use the data and content that the chips can deliver.
Sandu stated, “Our chip technology effectively allows brands to embed loyalty programs directly into their products without requiring people to have to sign up for any of the services,”
“Now that unlocks a variety of different things, right? Because you can now think about your products unlocking tickets, specific interviews, podcasts, stuff like that,” he added. “And so it’s for a lot of brands that want to find potential use cases for Web3 and the metaverse. Being eco-friendly is not a luxury statement,” Sandu”
What are LNQ chips used for?
Polygon, which is a sidechain, and Ethereum both use 99.998% less energy than they did before, but Spatial Labs’ business isn’t about making blockchains more sustainable. Spatial wants to make the physical fashion industry more sustainable. They also want their product to connect the physical and digital fashion worlds. “Fast fashion” is wasteful and can’t last in the long run.
Sandu says that the only way to solve the sustainability problem in fashion in the long run is to offer sustainable goods at reasonable prices.
He said, “The conversations around sustainability are very—I don’t want to necessarily say classist or elitist—but it still feels like a 1% conversation. We haven’t gotten to a space where those sustainable products are equally within the same price range as the products that are not.”
Sandu thinks that taking care of the environment is not a luxury.
Sandu thinks that in the future, the LNQ chip could encourage customers to keep their physical goods for longer by letting brands send updates with new content, features, or other changes. Long-term, this could change how people think about brands and give them new ways to keep in touch with their customers.
Sandu noticed that the higher cost of gas on ETH’s mainnet was why he chose to build his technology on Polygon instead of ETH’s mainnet.
Sandu stated that the ETH mainnet “hasn’t really been built for economies of scale,” and that he thinks Polygon’s fees are much more like those of a Visa or Mastercard transaction.
Also, Sandu’s hardware frees Spatial Labs from the restrictions of app stores like Apple’s, which have strict rules about NFTs and Web3 components for developers.
Sandu said this about the NFC chip: “Our chip technology is not dependent on, you know, an Apple App Store approval or anything, it works out of the box, you don’t even it doesn’t even require you to have an app installed to access some of the metadata and brands can customize that to their liking.”
Jay-Z backs WEB3
Sandu thinks he is in a great position because he is one of the few people of color to start a hardware company. He thinks that many VCs’ investment theses are “heavily skewed” and “heavily biased” against hardware founders like him because there aren’t many historical examples for them to look at.
“We’re not just making a funding announcement and going back to work,” Sandu said. “We’re going to continue breaking down these barriers that exist.”
Sandu was born in Ghana and raised in Compton. He said that successful Black businesspeople like Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Rihanna had a big impact on him. After working with Beyoncé and the late rapper Nipsey Hussle on augmented reality (AR) projects, Sandu met Jay-Z.
Sandu says that their first meeting was “a perfect harmony.”
Sandu thinks Jay is like a big brother, a good friend, and an investor. “Jay and I do business well together.”
He said he and the musician, who has won 24 Grammys, often talk about ideas and have the same ideas about how to make a difference.
“I trust that more people will be able to see this unconventional way of approaching business and be inspired by it to know that’s what it looks like for me, because as much as I love, like, Silicon Valley VCs, I can only relate so much, because the culture is so different. There’s such a big difference.”
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