Lucy is the virtual being from Wolves in the Walls.
Lucy is the virtual being from Wolves in the Walls.
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Virtual Beings Summit: Artificial people startups have raised more than $320 million so far

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

Virtual beings are artificial people powered by AI, and startups making them have raised more than $320 million to date. That’s one of the facts being highlighted at the Virtual Beings Summit on Wednesday.

The digital-only event will be held on Zoom from 10:30 a.m. Pacific to 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday. It’s the forum for talks on how to create virtual beings and what they’ll be useful for. The speakers will appear only as virtual beings in the conference, specifically as avatars from Fortnite or Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.