VR venture capital alliance forms $10 billion investment fund

Virtual reality has some real fuel to burn now. A bunch of venture capital firms and VR companies such as HTC have formed the Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance with $10 billion in funding to invest in VR and augmented reality projects.

That’s a huge amount of money — more than typically is invested in the entire game industry over a couple of years — to invest in a single sector. But it tells you how bullish the 28 VC firms and VR/AR companies are when it comes to the potential of VR, which is forecast to be a $30 billion market by 2020, according to tech M&A adviser Digi-Capital. This will be a hot topic at our AR/VR day at our GamesBeat 2016 conference on Aug. 1-3.

The Alliance is currently accepting submissions for new projects. It will meet six times a year in Beijing and San Francisco. It will invest in a wide range of technologies, such as VR, AR, or some kind of mixed reality. HTC, the maker of the HTC Vive VR headset, is part of the alliance.

The fund also has many well-known VC’s, including Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, and 500 Startups.

“This is the first time such renowned VCs are joining hands at this scale to drive the future of a new industry, rather than competing to find the best deals for themselves,” said Alvin Graylin, HTC’s regional head in China, in a statement.