Metaverse world-building startup Hadean has appointed a former Amazon executive as its new chief technology officer (CTO).
Royal O’Brien will join the firm as CTO and will oversee the continued development of the firm’s spatial computing technology across its commercial and defence divisions.
Hadean develops the tools and infrastructure needed to build metaverse experiences. These range from video games to military training programmes.
While metaverse technology has lost much of the hype that followed Facebook’s rebrand as Meta, Hadean continues to bet on the technology.
O’Brien’s background is largely as a games executive. The new Hadean CTO previously worked as the general manager of digital media and games at the Linux foundation. Before that, he held the title of game tech chief evangelist at Amazon, a role that saw him manage the vision and strategy of the O3DE open source project.
“Throughout my career, I’ve worked to shape the future of tomorrow by removing restrictions of scale and possibility and driving new levels of creativity and velocity,” said O’Brien.
“Hadean’s technology is enabling this shift in the most powerful way and together we will work to change the future of how we collectively experience our world.”
Hadean CEO Craig Beddis added: “Royal is one of the pioneers and driving forces of an open, interoperable metaverse and his vision of what the true metaverse should be aligns perfectly with our own.
“He is an incredible addition to our team and will be instrumental in shaping how Hadean continues to bridge the gap between physical and virtual worlds in a way that is collaborative, meaningful and valuable for everyone.”
Last year, Hadean raised £26.6m in a funding round that featured Fortnite developer Epic Games.