Sandbox VR Inc., a virtual reality startup that makes entertainment venues where people can experience highly immersive entertainment, announced today the company raised a hefty $68 million in early-stage funding.

Business Insider reported that the Series A round was led by Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Andrew Chen and joined by Mike Maples from Floodgate Fund LP, Stanford University, TriplePoint Capital LLC, ChinaRock Capital Management Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Many VR users experience virtual reality through headsets, goggles with tiny screens in them designed to be worn on the face and isolate the senses. In the cases of headsets, users might get their VR entertainment sitting on a chair in an office, on the couch at home or, for the more courageous, walking around the living room.

Sandbox saw an opportunity in providing specialized rooms at shopping malls in Asia and North America. Groups of users join together for team-based entertainment, donning headsets that contain their own wires, allowing freedom of movement allowing them to get whisked away by the experience.

“The Sandbox team is taking on the triumvirate of technology, distribution and content all together and all at once to bring VR to its next phase, accelerating the timeline dramatically,” Chen said in a statement.  “Once the ecosystem around Sandbox begins to achieve critical mass, we expect that the technology will unlock a golden era of storytelling and interactive, immersive entertainment.”

The company compares its platform to a “holodeck,” the seemingly magical room from the science fiction TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation” that transforms into its own immersive form of entertainment. Characters on the show used holodecks to visit far away places, enjoy themselves in games and even group training. Sandbox sees its VR equipment and rooms as useful for similar purposes of entertainment, simulation and training.

With this new capital funding round, Sandbox will open more locations around the world and “bring a holodeck to your neighborhood.” The funds will also be put into continuing to enhance its platform with cutting-edge equipment and better software to make a more immersive experience.

The company intends to announce partnerships over the next few months that will bring new entertainment capabilities to Sandbox’s holodecks, including a partner described as “one of the most recognizable franchises in the world.”

According to Chen, the Sandbox team is also hard at work building its own entertainment experiences using first-person shooters as a template: “Deadwood Mansion,” “The Curse of Davy Jones” and “Amber Sky 2088,” featuring zombies, pirates or science fiction.

The company is also reaching out to businesses and studios with the hope that Sandbox can bring them into this new venue for high-tech entertainment. 

“We believe this new medium is not about better movies or a more immersive game,” Sandbox wrote on Medium. “It’s something else entirely, and we as an industry will need to learn from the best of both mediums — movies and gaming.”

Photo: Sandbox VR