Spatial Labs, a web3 hardware and infrastructure company, today announced the closing of a $10 million seed round led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Marcy Venture Partners, the firm co-founded by Jay-Z. Iddris Sandu founded Spatial Labs in 2020, looking to create products and shopping experiences using augmented reality.

“For us, the metaverse is not a virtual space where people go to hang out. It’s a world where we can add more context to your real world and make your real world more enjoyable,” Sandu told TechCrunch. “We are going to be responsible for catalyzing a whole new generation to be more aware of their surroundings; more aware of how they spend and how they buy”.

The company Spatial Labs caused an industry sensation two years ago by selling clothing designed by Sandu, which was embedded with a microchip called LNQ (pronounced link) that provided consumers with the provenance and ownership history of the item, seen, naturally, in the block chain.

Almost like a QR code, tapping the LNQ chip with an unlocked phone online and in-person experiences like virtual concerts. Last year Spatial Labs launched a marketplace to buy and sell items. He also sold microchips to those who wanted to sell their own embedded products and upload their own exclusive offers to potential buyers. The chip, for example, allows brands to add loyalty programs directly to their products instead of, say, signing someone up for an email list. To gain access to loyalty benefits, all consumers need to do is hold their phone close to the chip embedded in the item they bought from the brand

“There was a time when nutrition information was not available on products, so people just ate anything,” Sandu said. “We want to give and create a new ecosystem of nutritional information for the products you put in your body, as well as the objects that you put in your house”.

This seed round makes Sandu, now 25, one of the youngest black men to raise a double-digit seed round, and a solo founder to boot. He is already part of a somewhat rarefied club. According to Crunchbase data, just 1% of all VC funds were allocated to black founders last year; Of the $21.5 billion raised by web3 startups worldwide last year, $60 million went to US-based black web3 founders, one of whom was Sandu.

He said it took him around six months to close his round. When asked what it was like to raise money during what was also a crypto winter, he said that for black founders, there is little difference between a bear market and a bull market due to persistent discrimination in funding. “It’s always crypto winter to be a black founder,” he said. “It’s a challenge, but it’s worth it.”

With the fresh capital, Spatial Labs plans to continue scaling its blockchain-enabled technology and expand into other industries, such as media and entertainment. Later this year, it also plans to release a device called Node to simplify the time it takes to develop and deploy augmented reality experiences. “We are also looking at lowering the barrier to entry for web3 and augmented reality using our chip technology,” Sandu continued.

Sandu has come a long way from where he started. Born in Accra, Ghana, he moved with his family to Los Angeles at the age of three. Inspired by the launch of the iPhone, he spent time at his local libraries, first in Compton and then in Harbor City after his family moved, to teach himself computer programming in hopes of one day become an entrepreneur.

In high school, he worked for Google and created his own apps. Recognized by then-President Barack Obama for his work in STEM, he forgo MIT to focus on building technology, consulted with Twitter, Snapchat and Rihanna, created software for Uber, and helped create the first smart retail store with the late Nipsey. hustle

At the same time, he realized there was an information gap affecting black youth like him, where even his textbooks in Compton were out of date.

“If you want to keep people out of space, the easiest way to do it is to create separatism when it comes to information,” Sandu said. He considers himself lucky that, at a young age, he was able to find his way to push the limits, but he points out that this shouldn’t be the case. Next year, he hopes to launch a personal fund to support people of color and will focus on hardware and technology innovation.

Until then, though, he’s building Spatial Labs. He wants it to become one of the fastest-growing unicorns, and generally wants to inspire the next generation of technologists; Naturally, of course, he also wants to create products that, well, change the world.

“Legacy for me is about how many lives we can impact, rather than how many products we can sell,” he said.

“It is the purpose for which I feel that I have been called here,” Sandu continued. “Opening doors and holding them in for as long as possible and eventually making sure those doors just don’t exist. Nobody can watch if there is not a door there”.