This stock is the real concept stock of Chunyuan Universe

Matterport provides another new way to connect the real world with the virtual world.

　　I admit that I have always been skeptical of the meta-universe vision that Facebook’s parent company Meta Platform puts forward, including virtual meetings, virtual concerts, and the movie "Ready Player One".

　　But recently when riding a modified road bike at home, I made a new discovery. The rear wheel of the bicycle was removed, and the body of the bicycle was fixed on a smart trainer produced by a company called Wahoo. At the time, I was riding a bike while staring at the MacBook computer screen in front of me, riding through a place called Watopia in a bike app called Zwift. At that time, I suddenly realized that I had already had a meta-universe experience for several months, but I didn't fully realize it.

　My colleague Alex Eule in Barron’s is also a virtual reality skeptic. He wrote an article on Zwift a few years ago and talked about the company’s potential Transformative impact. Since the publication of this article, the experience that Zwift and the company have brought to people has evolved considerably.

　　First of all, Zwift has received more than $600 million in venture capital to become a unicorn company. The company currently has nearly 4 million registered users in more than 200 countries. For $15 a month, you can ride more than 200 miles on the digital highway, including replica scenes of real locations in cities such as Paris and Tokyo, and some scenes are fictitious, such as routes through volcanoes and the ocean floor.

　　Although Zwift is not the kind of meta-universe that Zuckerberg envisioned to enter with headphones, it provides an all-encompassing experience in which people can meet, communicate, and use a virtual currency. What you need is a road bike, a pair of sneakers, a laptop or tablet, and a smooth Internet connection.

　　Zwift founder and CEO Eric Min believes the company start-ups created this world there is much room for development, plans to raise more funds to achieve this goal. One of Min's ideas is to provide developers with the same tools as Zwift to create virtual environments, so Zwift and Roblox (RBLX) have an intersection. Roblox is expected to generate 2.7 billion US dollars in sales this year by creating games and virtual world tools for users.

　　If anyone still doubts the authenticity of this virtual world, Min said that Zwift cycling is considering becoming a potential Olympic event, hoping to make its debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Min said: "Zwift offers more than just training and social riding."

　　It can be seen that Metaverse was not a sudden idea by Zuckerberg during the quarantine period of the epidemic. This idea has existed for decades. In January 2008, a junior marketing executive at IBM created a platform called "IBM and Meta Universe" to show how to work, learn and play in a virtual world. IBM even owns intellectual property rights related to Metaverse, such as a 2010 patent for "promoting products in a virtual world", but IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said that the company has not formulated Make a big plan in the field of meta universe.

　　The "IBM and Metaverse" platform contains images of the virtual game Second Life, which has existed for nearly 20 years. Although Second Life may have been forgotten for many years, the company still exists. The parent company Linden Lab was sold to an investment group last year at an undisclosed price, but there is no doubt that the transaction price at that time will not be as high as it is now.

　　Brad Oberwager, executive chairman of Linden Lab, who led the acquisition, remains passionate about the virtual world. He pointed out that since the Second Life service was launched in 2003, 73 million accounts have been created, although most of them are no longer in use. The company said that the current average monthly user volume is between 650,000 and 900,000.

　　It is worth pointing out that the craze that Second Life triggered many years ago did not keep this company prospering. This is one of the reasons why I still have some skepticism about the current meta-universe craze.

　　For now, investors are still scrambling to find and buy meta universe concept stocks. The most prominent companies include game companies such as Roblox and Unity Software, and chip manufacturers such as Nvidia (NVDA) and Qualcomm (QCOM). But they are not pure meta universe concept stocks.

　　This is one reason why some investors are so fascinated by Matterport (MTTR), a Sunnyvale, California-based company that produces cameras and software for taking virtual and 3D images.

　　Matterport’s main target market is the commercial and residential real estate market, and the company’s software is used to generate virtual visits to offices and residences. Since going public with SPAC in July this year, Matterport's market value has approximately doubled. Matterport initially relied on a dedicated camera, and now also provides a smartphone application, users can create a digital copy of the actual location through an Apple or Android smartphone.

　　Wedbush analyst Ives (Dan Ives) has been recommended Matterport of stock , but he admitted that in the near term refers to the standard, the stock valuation, calculated according to the 2022 expected sales of more than 40 times earnings. Ives admitted that this is a highly speculative stock.

　　But Matterport CEO RJ Pittman (RJ Pittman) described his company very fascinatingly. He said that Matterport’s secret is to turn buildings into data by generating digital copies of actual locations . This is "real world Digitization". The company now has digital copies of more than 6 million spaces. Pittman joined Matterport in 2018 and previously served as chief product officer at eBay for five years.

　　Matterport recently announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services to make it easier to create "digital versions" of locations in the real world. Like Zwift, it provides another way to connect the real world with the virtual world. New way.

　　I am not going to bet on this stock with my own investment funds, but if you have spare money, Matterport is an attractive speculative target for the future of Meta Universe.